Transition from Demographic Dividend to Reform Dividend:——Simulation of China's Potential Growth Rate

Due to diminishing demographic dividend characterized by a falling workingage population and rising dependency ratio, China's long-term potential growth rates will keep declining, likely to be a mere 6.6% during the 13 th Five-Year Plan period(2016-2020). China's economic growth sustainability hinges upon its transition from the previous dependence on demographic dividend to the future reform dividend. In the growth accounting equation, we have simulated various reform initiatives and arrived at the following findings. First, although both the labor participation rate and TFP can increase China's potential growth rate, the former will only achieve a short-term growth effect, which will diminish in the long run. By contrast, the growth effect of TFP demonstrates the tendency of continuous increase. This further indicates that China's economic growth will increasingly rely on TFP improvement instead of traditional factor input. Second, different from the diminishing growth effect of enrolment rate, training may play a pivotal role in human capital development to significantly enhance potential growth rates. Third, if all reform initiatives can achieve their expected effects, integrated reform dividends may reach one or two percentage points of China's potential growth rate.

China’s Labor Market in Seven Decades

Soon after its founding in 1949,the People’s Republic of China established an all-round planned economic system,abolished the labor market,put labor authorities in charge of urban employment planning and placements,and assigned rural workforce as members of the People’s Communes.This planned labor system lasted until the reform and opening up program was launched in 1978.In the face of great employment pressures as educated youth returned from the countryside to cities,the government took a series of policies to bring the educated youth into the workforce through referral by labor authorities,voluntarily organized employment,and self-employment.With the abolition of the centralized job placement system,China’s labor market started to develop,giving play to the comparative advantage of abundant labor force,and the dual economic structure started to integrate.After decades of rapid growth and job creation,China’s labor market have turned from oversupply to undersupply since 2003,and labor remuneration increased sharply.China’s changing resource endowment structure was accompanied by a shift in its labor market policy from employment to the labor market.Over the past four decades of reform and opening up,the Chinese government enacted wise labor market policies in each critical stage.

Low Labor Share in GDP Holds Back Economic Development

The declining share of labor compensation in China＇s GDP has raised intense public concern. Using statistics since 1978, this research paper examines, in detail, the changing patterns of labor compensation since reform and opening- up. Following international practices. this paper has adjusted China＇s labor compensation statistics.The results show that, iu contrast to a significant drop in the share of labor competsation in GDP before making an adjustment, the adjusted share has actually remained stable for the most part after the late 1970s.There has been no discernable fall until the last several years, The real prablem in China＇s functional distribution of national income since the late 1970s has not been the declining share of labor compensation in GDP. Actually, the share has always remained consistently low.It can be characterized as beiag ＂stable at a low level on a long-term basis＂.How to increase the labor share,which is in the interest of the average worker is a major question that must be addressed in China＇s future economic development.

Balance and Sharing:Women's Childcare Time and Family's Help

It is of crucial importance for professional women to strike a balance between childcare and work.Help from family can effectively reduce women's time spent on childcare.Based on relevant survey,this paper successively analyzes the time of mother,father and grandparents invested in childcare and explores how women are supported by their family in this duty.Infant and childcare can be as time-consuming as a full-time job.Mothers have always played a primary role in infant and childcare,while grandparents,offering a helping hand to effectively alleviate the mother's workload,can play an alternative role,which is of great significance.This is particularly true in early childhood,when more than 40% of Chinese children are under the care of grandparents,with relatively limited participation of their fathers.Childcare gap between mothers and fathers is even larger in rural China.It is quite common for a family to turn to nursery services when their child are three years old to significantly alleviate the mother's childcare burden.When it comes to the design of relevant public policies and projects,consideration should be given to the role of each family member in taking care of infants and children in different growth stages to explore more options for childcare.More specifically,in addition to motherhood,grandparents' support should be valued,and fatherhood should be enhanced.

The Rural-Urban Income Gap and Critical Points of Institutional Change

I. Introduction It is common in developing countries for the relationship between the state and the farmers to be coercive, and for the relationship between rural and urban sectors to be urban-biased. This is opposite to the situation in developed countries, where agriculture and farmers are protected by government policies. The rural-urban divide brought about by such a policy intention is, therefore,a phenomenon prevailing in developing countries and the focus of much discussion within development economist circles. A host of literature in development economics has attempted to answer challenging questions such as： （1） how are urban-biased policies formed and why do they continue to remain in developing countries？ （2） in order to implement those policies, what measures are adopted and what are their functioning mechanisms and welfare effects？

Labor Shortages:Should We Take Precautionary Measures?

While people generally worry about unemployment and the pressures on employment in China, the relationship between supply and demand in the labor market has quietly shifted in the opposite direction. First, shortages of migrant workers occurred in coastal areas in 2004 and have not yet been alleviated. Even in some central

SOLVING A POPULATION PUZZLE

Coordinated development of talents, industries and innovation will be a decisive weapon How should we regard China’s demographic changes and related issues at a time of heated discussions about new births hitting a record low, the population about to see negative growth and the aging process accelerating? How should China address the population issue from the long-term perspective?