Regional convergence under declining population: The case of Japan

Using regional data from Japan, we examine how population growth affected regional convergence in Japan, where population decline has become conspicuous in several regions. The basic equation in the analysis allows two distinct features that previous studies rarely explored. First, we allow the coefficient of initial per capita output to change when the growth rate of population is lower than a threshold value. Second, we allow the growth rate of population to have ambiguous effects on the growth rate of per capita output. Our estimation results confirm the convergence hypothesis in Japan. However, we find that the declining speed of convergence was more conspicuous in the regions that had negative population growth. We also find that the decline in population growth, which was irrelevant for regional economic growth before 1995, came to have harmful impacts on regional economic growth after 1995. We believe this occurred because in societies with declining populations, economies of agglomeration had more significantly disappeared in poorer regions than in richer regions.     

老龄化下人均经济增长率变动的实证分析

文章从曼昆、罗默和韦尔的总量生产函数出发,在经济增长模型中加入老龄化因素,据此分析了老龄化所致人口结构变化对于人均经济增长率变动的影响,并对所建构的模型进行了检验,结果表明自1978-2004年老龄化因素下的人均经济增长变动率一直为正,但增长呈现下降趋势.同时对其变动作出了预测分析,结果表明我国在2035年以前处于人均经济增长变动率为正的人口红利期,在2036-2055年则处于人口亏损期.针对分析结论,本文提出了充分利用人口红利期的政策建议和未来研究的方向.     

Net interstate population growth rates and the Tiebout-Tullock hypothesis: New empirical evidence, 1990–2000

This study empirically investigates the Tiebout-Tullock hypothesis as it might have applied to the pattern of net interstate population growth rates over the period 1990–2000. For the study period, it appears that the net state population growth rate has been an increasing function of the ratio of the total state plus local government outlays on public education in a state to that state's total state plus local government tax burden. Additional variables in the study, including the previous-period median single-family housing-price inflation rate, a measure of previous-period growth in real personal income per capita and certain quality-of-life variables, also prove to be significant determinants of the net population growth rate in a state. In this context, it appears that, for the study period, the Tiebout-Tullock hypothesis played a significant role in determining state net population growth rates.     

农村养老保险、养老金待遇与最优政策组合

采用OLG模型考察了农村养老保险个人缴费率、集体补助率、地方政府补贴率、基础养老金率和人口增长率对资本积累、人均消费和养老金的影响,并寻求政策变量最优组合。研究发现,提高个人缴费率会增加养老金;提高集体补助率、地方政府补贴率以及人口增长率下降都会增加资本劳动比、人均消费和养老金;提高基础养老金率会降低资本劳动比和人均消费而增加养老金。同时,最优的地方政府和集体补贴率随最优基础养老金率同方向变动。若最优基础养老金率不变,则人口增长率小幅变动会引起最优地方政府和集体补贴率大幅反向变动。根据影响方向和力度,应提高个人缴费率和集体补助率,调整财政支出结构以维持现有基础养老金率、相应提高地方政府补贴率,控制人口增长率。     

Optimal economic growth and non-stable population

Summary This paper analyses optimal economic growth when the (exogenous) rate of population growth changes. The optimal growth path is characterized by a strikingly straightforward generalization of the traditional steady-state Golden Rule of Accumulation. The comparative statics results allow for a generalization of Samuelson's (1975) analysis of the lower-bound for the optimal rate of population growth. It is shown that under plausible assumptions the optimal savings rate follows an inverted U-shaped or U-shaped pattern during periods of demographic transition, according to whether the growth rate of births is falling or rising.     

人口老龄化、储蓄对经济增长的影响——基于系统GMM与门槛模型的实证分析

日益严峻的人口老龄化问题对中国经济可持续发展敲响了警钟。基于索洛模型引入老龄人口因素推导人口老龄化与经济增长之间的关系,收集整理中国31个省市及自治区2005—2019年的数据并构建动态面板模型与门槛模型对其进行实证分析。结果表明：人口老龄化对经济增长有显著的抑制作用,储蓄率对经济增长有明显的促进作用;储蓄率跨过门槛值后,老龄化对经济增长的抑制作用得到显著减弱。     

新疆少数民族人口增长对少数民族地区经济发展的影响分析

人口问题是当今世界面临的重大问题之一,人口规模及其增长速度的变化影响着社会经济的发展。新疆是边疆少数民族地区,生态环境脆弱,经济发展滞后,人口增长过快。本文以人口与经济相互影响、相互制约的关系为主线,分析新疆少数民族人口增长对少数民族地区经济发展的影响,并提出协调新疆少数民族人口增长与少数民族地区经济发展的政策建议。     

部分积累制公共年金、双向利他与内生增长

本文采用内生增长的叠代模型,考察中国的部分积累制公共年金对人口总量、经济增长和代际净转移的影响。结果显示：提高个人缴费率和企业缴费率会减少孩子数和代际净转移率、提升经济增长率。在一定条件下,提高个人缴费进入个人账户的比例和企业缴费进入个人账户的比例都会减少孩子数、提升单位劳动产出增长率和代际净转移率。选择适当的费率组合以满足一定条件,能够适度控制人口规模,使经济合理快速地增长,并实现子对父的物质支持。     

Demographic Effects on Personal Saving in the Future

After briefly examining the various proposed causes for the decline in the U.S. personal saving rate in the past decade, this essay then argues that a shift in the demographic composition of the population will be a much more important cause for a decline in personal saving in the future. A change in the balance between those in the labor force who are saving and retirees who are dissaving will result in a considerable fall in the aggregate saving rate under most assumptions. The simulation model used to examine this phenomenon takes into account the interest rate, the growth rate of the economy, the retirement age. the growth of population, and the life expectancy. Attention is also given to certain consequences of the fall in the saving rate, such as changes in the interest rate, changes in asset prices, and a decline in the GDP growth rate.     

The effects of demographic changes on the real interest rate in Japan

What are the effects of demographic changes on the real interest rate in Japan? We present a dynamic general equilibrium model in which demographic changes are captured by exogenous changes in the ratio of workers to the total population. Our model predicts that a decline in this ratio in the process of population aging lowers the real interest rate; and the demographic impact on the real interest rate is amplified by a fall in land prices in the presence of collateral constraints. The model is simulated with the realized and forecasted changes in the working-age population ratio, the TFP growth, and government spending in Japan. Our results indicate that the TFP growth is the main source of variations in the real interest rate, but the demographic factor is also quantitatively important especially for its long-term movements.     

Effective labor supply and growth outlook in China

The falling projections of working-age population in China has led to predictions of much slower economic growth. We consider three mechanisms that could contribute to higher effective labor supply growth: further improvement in educational attainment due to cohort replacement and rising college enrollment; improvement in aggregate labor quality due to urbanization; and higher labor force participation due to later retirement. We find that these factors result in a projected growth rate of effective labor input of 0.40% for 2015−2030 compared to −0.60% for working age population. As a result, the projected growth rate of GDP will be 5.80% for 2015–2030 compared to 5.23% if these factors are ignored.     

IMPACT ON ECONOMIC GROWTH OF DIFFERENTIAL POPULATION GROWTH IN AN ECONOMY WITH HIGH INEQUALITY

The economic growth of South Africa has been disappointing over the last quarter century. This note addresses a conceptual problem that arises because of composition effects. Two important features of the South African economy are, first, its extreme inequality (primarily between the white population and the African population). Additionally, the African population has been growing rapidly, while the white population has experienced a declining share. This note derives an explicit equation for the impact of inequality and population-growth differences on the growth of per capita GDP. It shows that the combination of divergent population growth and high inequality can lead to an apparent drag on measured economic growth even though the components, and a more adequate measure of economic welfare, are growing at a healthy rate.     

Long-Run Economic Performance and the Labor Market

This article uses a simple variation of the Solow model to study the interrelations between economic growth and the labor market. We show, both analytically and empirically, that income and capital per worker in the steady state depend positively on flexibility of the labor market; that the steady-state unemployment rate depends positively on the rate of population growth and the productivity growth rate and negatively on the savings rate and flexibility of the labor market; and, finally, that labor market flexibility affects convergence toward steady state.     

Challenge Facing China＇s Economic Growth in Its Aging but not Affluent Era

I. Introduction As a result of the strictly implemented one-child policy, China has completed a demographic transition within approximately 20 years, a very short period of time when compared to most developed countries. As a continuation of the first stage of transition from high death rate, high birth rate and low growth rate to low death rate, high birth rate and high growth rate, which was completed in the 1950s, the second stage of transition from low death rate, high birth rate and high …     

Potential Impact of Climate Change and Armed Conflict on Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa

This study investigates the potential impact of climate change and armed conflict on inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The system-GMM for a panel of 35 SSA countries is employed using annual data from 1997 to 2018. The empirical results indicate that armed conflict and climate are major drivers of inequality in SSA. The direct impact of the two determinants is more than the indirect impact. Also, the impact of armed conflict is more than the climate change. The coefficients of population growth, output growth, unemployment, natural rent, exchange rate and inflation rate are significant positive predictors of inequality in the SSA. The study advocates for a multidisciplinary inclusive growth strategy that prioritises the climate change reversal, de-escalation of armed conflict, population control, reduction of the unemployment rate and increasing informal sector productivity, to promote inclusive growth and reduce inequality. However, sequencing the policy targets relative to the magnitude of their impact on inequality is extremely crucial.     

Public capital formation and labor productivity growth in Mexico

This paper addresses the important question whether public investment spending on economic infrastructure enhances economic growth and labor productivity in Mexico. Following the lead of the endogenous growth literature, it presents a modified production function which explicitly includes the positive or negative externality effects generated by additions to the public capital stock. Using cointegration analysis, the paper proceeds to estimate a dynamic labor productivity function for the 1955–94 period that incorporates the impact of the growth rate in the stocks of both private and public capital (as opposed to the flows) and the economically active population (EAP) (rather than the rate of population growth). The results suggest that (lagged) increases in public investment spending on economic infrastructure—as opposed to overall public investment spending—have a positive and highly significant effect on the rate of labor productivity growth. In addition, the estimates suggest that increases in government consumption expenditures may have a negative effect on the rate of labor productivity growth, thus suggesting that the composition of government spending may also play an important role in determining the rate of labor productivity growth. Finally, the findings call into question the politically expedient policy in many Latin American countries of disproportionately reducing public capital expenditures on economic and social infrastructure to meet targeted reductions in the fiscal deficit as a proportion of GDP.     

Fertility,income distribution,and economic growth: theory and cross-country evidence

The authors perform discriminatory, empirical tests of a theoretical model that predicts that family size adversely affects output per capita and nonsteady state growth rates. Neoclassical models posit that adverse output and nonsteady growth rates are affected by labor force growth (LFG) or population growth (PG). This study tests whether family size (FS) will be more significant than LFG or PG in explaining differences in economic growth (EG) rates across countries during 1960-88. A proxy variable for the public education system was used to separate government interventions on human capital formation from market forces. Data were obtained for 73 countries, which exclude centrally planned economies, oil-producing countries, and those with less than 1 million population. The empirical test is run with 58-country, 45-country, and 96-country samples to test for robustness and reliability. The empirical test supports the theoretical model. It demonstrates that equal distribution of income and smaller FS enhance EG. With income inequality, the effect of FS was significant, and the effect of the LFG rate or PG rate was insignificant. With a given FS, LFG was positively correlated with EG. A reduction of the net fertility rate by one point would increase the worker output growth rate by 0.25%, and the differences in growth rates between high- and low-fertility countries would be 1%. An increase in the income share of the bottom 60% would increase the growth rate of worker output by about 1%. Higher investments in public or private education would be conducive to growth.     

A theory of heterogeneous city growth

We consider an economy with three cities producing different outputs. Two cities produce intermediate goods, a type 1 city producing an intermediate “agricultural” good with capital and labor only, and a type 2 city producing an intermediate “industrial” good with capital, labor, and human capital. A type 3 city produces the final good which is obtained from the two intermediate goods and labor. The asymmetric introduction of human capital allows us to prove that the three cities experience, at equilibrium, heterogeneous endogenous growth rates which are proportional to the growth rate of human capital. We show that the “industrial” type 2 city is characterized by the larger growth rate while the “agricultural” type 1 city experiences the lower growth rate, and thus the type 3 city is characterized by a growth rate which is a convex combination of the two former growth rates. This implies that the relative size in terms of output of the “agricultural” city decreases over time. This property allows us to recover the empirical fact that most non‐agricultural production occurs in growing metropolitan areas. But, simultaneously, as we prove that total labor employed in each city is proportional to the total population, the relative population size distribution of cities is constant over time, as shown in empirical studies.     

An Examination of Labor Productivity Growth and Structural Changes in the Singapore Labor Force*

This paper ?rst examines the sources of growth in the Singapore economy by decomposing real per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth into two components. It is found that, for the period 1974–1999, labor productivity was a signi?cant source of economic growth in Singapore. Conversely, the contribution of the rate of change in employment ratio was only of secondary importance. On further decomposition, the rate of change in employment ratio was due mainly to rate of change in population age‐structure ratio and rate of change in labor‐force participation rate. Growth patterns of the labor force were examined after it has been segregated according to gender, citizenship and age group independently. Labor productivity growth was highest in the transport, storage and communication sector, while labor productivity growth was lowest in the ?nancial, insurance, real estate and business services sector.     

The Demography of Indonesia in Comparative Perspective

Having reduced its fertility rate over the past 40 years, Indonesia has reached a new demographic crossroad. Its fertility rate is now around 2.5 births per woman, which, if sustained, would add substantial numbers to Indonesia's population in the future. There are concerns within Indonesia that the present level of population growth is an obstacle to continued economic development and, accordingly, that fertility should be reduced to the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman as soon as possible. Yet a comparative perspective indicates that countries such as Singapore, Japan, and Thailand are concerned about the effects that their very low rates of fertility are having on their labour forces and their rates of population ageing. This article suggests that with the right policy settings Indonesia can avoid this outcome yet continue to reduce its fertility. It discusses the implications of Indonesia's population growth and distribution for its economy, as well as the poor quality of demographic data.