技术变迁与人口从爆发式增长向持续负增长转变——以中国人口发展过程为例

Technological Revolution and Population Growth Transformation:From Explosive Growth to Sustained Negative Growth––Take China’s Population Development Process as an Example

中国人口在过去几十年增长快速且人口规模庞大,但人口负增长时代即将来临。该文研究了技术进步和技术革命在这个过程中的作用,发现在大规模技术革命以前,技术进步对人口容量提升有限,社会长期处于“马尔萨斯陷阱”之中。技术革命则推动了人口容量、死亡率和预期寿命的转变,导致人口爆发式增长。但随着科技革命深入发展,最后引发了生育的转变,生育水平持续下降,人口快速增长的长期动力不复存在,将进入持续负增长。新中国成立后,由于努力吸收几次工业革命成果进行社会主义建设,中国先后经历了人口容量大幅提升、死亡率快速降低、预期寿命延长、生育水平下降发展的过程。当前中国人口发展已经完全脱离了“马尔萨斯陷阱”,即将进入负增长区间,因而未来中国人口战略的重点应当是如何促使人口在下降到一定规模后保持稳态发展。

China has a huge population,but the era of negative population growth is about to come.What causes this process is a major theoretical question.By constructing a unified analytical framework,the role of technological revolution in population growth is studied.Before the technological revolution,technological progress slowly increased population capacity,and society was in a Malthusian trap for a long time.The technological revolution has greatly increased social productivity and promoted the transformation of population capacity.At the same time,the rapid development of medical and health technology has promoted the transformation of death rate and life expectancy,prompting the population size to soar.However,with the rapid development of the scientific and technological revolution,in recent decades,the quantity of children has been replaced by quality,and the improvement of contraception and birth control technology has triggered the transformation of fertility,resulting in a rapid decline in fertility.After the founding of the People’s Republic of China,the scientific and technological revolution played a significant role in the transformation of China’s population.In the past few decades,it has rapidly experienced the process of a large increase in population capacity,a reduction in population mortality,an increase in life expectancy,a significant change in the willingness to bear children and fertility behavior,and a rapid decline in fertility levels.In the future,the focus of China’s population development will no longer be the Malthus trap problem,but should be how to play the role of the technological revolution to promote the population to maintain a steady development at an appropriate scale.