Migration,population aging,and income inequality in China

In this study, we examine the effects of four demographic factors, namely, birth, death, natural aging, and net migration, on population aging and income inequality in China. We use the official Chinese data and the China Household Income Project Survey data for the 2007–2013 period and apply a decomposition model based on the Shapley method. Unlike previous studies, we include migration in our decomposition model and find that natural aging is the primary factor contributing to population aging in both urban and rural areas. Further, migration may accelerate population aging in rural areas. Moreover, migration contributes to reducing income inequality in urban areas, while widening income inequality in rural areas. The effect of migration is larger than those of birth, death, and natural aging on income inequality. The robustness checks confirm these conclusions.     

Age as double‐edged sword among victims of customer mistreatment: A self‐esteem threat perspective

Service workers are expected to maintain high‐quality service delivery despite customer mistreatment—the poor‐quality treatment of service workers by customers—which can be demeaning and threatening to self‐esteem. Although service work is increasingly delivered by middle‐aged and older workers, very little is known about how employees across the age range navigate abuse from customers on the job. Does advancing age help or hinder service performance in reaction to customer mistreatment? Drawing on strength and vulnerability integration theory, we proposed that age paradoxically both helps and hinders performance after customer mistreatment, albeit at different stages. We tested our proposed model in a two‐sample field investigation of service workers and their supervisors using a time‐lagged, dyadic design. Results showed that age heightens the experience of self‐esteem threat but, nevertheless, dampens reactions to self‐esteem threat, leading to divergent effects on performance at different stages. Implications for age and service work, as well as aging and the sense of self, are discussed.     

“双低一代”的社会经济特征研究

由于即将退休与刚退休的这一代人拥有低赡养比与低抚养比，本文称其为“双低一代”。本文基于宏观统计数据与微观调查数据，利用分位回归等方法对“双低一代”的社会学特征与经济学特征进行研究，发现其具有人口总量较多、教育背景优良、社会阅历丰富、消费倾向明显等特征。此外，通过对“双低一代”的人力资本存量进行测算，提出充分发挥“双低一代”余热、缓解老龄化问题的政策建议。     

The poor outside the lamplight: on the prevalence of poverty among population groups not included in household surveys

Poverty rate calculations are often based on household surveys that exclude some of the groups most vulnerable to poverty such as the homeless. This paper documents the nature of the excluded groups and the quantitative importance of their omission for the Czech Republic. Our study combines European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data for 2011 with information from the 2011 Population Census. Our preferred estimate indicates an increase in the poverty rate by almost one percentage point. The paper contributes to accurately identifying the most vulnerable members of the society, which is essential for setting effective social policies.     

Do pensions foster education? An empirical perspective

The paper examines the effect of population ageing on public education spending. On the one hand, ageing is expected to have a negative effect on education, as an increasing number of retirees results in ‘intergenerational conflict’ and, hence, the condemnation of education expenditure. On the other hand, ageing, in combination with pay-as-you-go pension systems, offers incentives for the working-age generation to invest in the public education of the young in order to ‘reap’ the benefits (that is, higher income tax/contributions) of their greater future productivity. Empirical evidence derived from the application of a fixed effects approach to panel data for OECD countries shows that the increasing share of elderly people has a non-linear effect on education spending. This indicates a certain degree of intergenerational conflict. Nevertheless, we find that future population ageing, which reinforces the mechanism linking public education and pensions, reflects positively on education expenditure. Furthermore, by disaggregating total education expenditure by educational levels, we observe that this effect is led by levels of non-compulsory education, probably as a reflection of the direct connection to labor productivity.     

Aging Workforce,Firm Productivity and Labor Costs in Korea: Are Older Workers Costly to Firms?

Are older workers costly to firms? This study aims to investigate the relationship between an aging workforce on firm productivity and labor costs using a unique Korean firm‐level panel dataset (WPS) covering the period from 2007 to 2011. The primary results show no evidence of a negative relationship between the proportion of older workers and firm productivity, and no significant relationship between the proportion of older workers and labor costs. In addition, the findings of this study implies that failure to account for unobserved firm heterogeneity and endogeneity of changes in age structure biases the results toward finding a correlation between the age structure of workers and firm productivity and labor costs. Consequently, there is a tendency to underestimate the true value of older workers for firms.     

老龄化与碳排放：消费效应还是生产效应？——基于2002-2017年中国省级面板数据的实证研究

人口老龄化是经济增长的一大阻碍,它对碳排放的影响是做出环境政策抉择的关键因素.以中国2002—2017年的省级面板数据为研究样本,从理论与实证两个层面分析人口老龄化与碳排放的关系及影响机制.一方面,构建包含碳排放的世代交叠模型(overlapping generations,OLG),发现老龄化主要通过消费效应和生产效应两个路径对碳排放产生影响;另一方面,从实证层面发现老龄化与碳排放之间存在倒"U"形关系,而且消费效应在人口老龄化与碳排放的关系中起到部分中介作用,生产效应的影响则不显著.     

Macroeconomic implications of population aging: Evidence from Japan

Population aging is an important feature of Japan’s economy, which since 2006 has become a super-aged society. Changes in the age distribution of the population have important macroeconomic implications. Using annual data for 1960–2015, this study tests whether population age shares have long run influences on domestic saving, domestic investment, real GDP, inflation, the fiscal balance, and the current account balance. Cointegration is found between each macroeconomic variable and the demographic variables, which is a key finding of the analysis. The main empirical findings from the long-run cointegrating equations are that the effects of demographic change on the macroeconomic variables are statistically significant and quite strong. Alternative variants of the United Nation’s population projections provide further evidence of the importance of the demographic changes for Japan’s macroeconomic future. This study finds that future trends of key macroeconomic variables are not monotonic, but rather that long swings in the demographic factors produce a mixture of moderate growth periods and episodes of GDP stagnation.     

The long breadth of cities: revisiting worldwide urbanization patterns, 1950–2030

ABSTRACT

A comparative analysis of population dynamics worldwide contributes to profile distinctive demographic and economic trajectories of urban growth, discriminating processes of settlement concentration or dispersion under sequential cycles of urbanization. However, a wide-ranging characterization of urban cycles based on demographic dynamics worldwide is still missing. The present work is aimed at filling such a gap analysing long-term changes (1950–2030) in annual population growth rate of 1691 urban agglomerations with more than 300,000 inhabitants in 74 world countries. Results of this study indicate that metropolitan growth worldwide was associated with largely variable rates of population growth, highly positive before 2000 and progressively reducing over recent decades. Despite important differences at continental (and country) scale, demographic expansion of urban agglomerations showed two contrasting phases with a break point in the 1980s denoting a progressive reduction in spatial heterogeneity of population growth rates and a moderate slowdown in demographic dynamics. Intensity of urban expansion and spatial heterogeneity in population growth rates across metropolitan agglomerations evidences a trade-off between fast and slow demographic dynamics. These findings can be better understood to support theories of sequential city growth, making a suitable contribution to policy making, especially in countries where urban population is expanding more rapidly.     

Financial risk attitudes and aging in Australia

A number of empirical studies document that people tend to become more risk averse as they get older. But other studies find only little evidence that age matters for financial risk attitudes. This prompts a call for revisiting the relationship between age and risk attitude to better support policy recommendations. The current paper contributes to this effort by utilising large-scale population data to conduct a dynamic panel analysis. Care is taken to avoid the problem of endogeneity of lagged risk attitude in modelling its effects. Analysis reveals that individuals' past risk attitude has a positive effect on their current risk attitude. However, there is only little evidence that risk attitude and age are systematically related. Our results shed some light on the previous contradictory empirical findings in the literature and suggest that past risk attitude is potentially of greater relevance than chronological age in determining current risk attitude.