Apart from middle-aged and elderly people, does delayed retirement have any impact on young people?

Theoretically speaking, the reason why the increase of the elderly labor force will crowd out the work of young people is based on two basic assumptions.

First of all, the number of jobs in the economy is fixed;

Second, there is a strong occupational substitution between the elderly and the young.

At this time, delaying retirement will increase the supply of old labor force, thus crowding out young labor force and causing the unemployment rate of young labor force to rise. This view was popular in countries with high youth unemployment rate in 1970s and 1980s, and many policies were formulated to encourage older employees to retire early. However, the later development shows that the implementation of these policies failed to effectively improve the employment level of young labor force. This view has also been questioned more and more. Therefore, the first hypothesis is also called labor fallacy of composition.

This "fallacy" is often mentioned when studying the influence of immigration on the employment rate in immigrant areas. This hypothesis holds that the market demand for labor is exogenous. However, in fact, the change of the number of elderly labor force itself may affect the total demand of labor force, and then affect the employment rate of young labor force.

For example, the increase of aging labor force increases the total labor supply, which leads to the decrease of marginal labor cost and the expansion of optimal output scale, which leads to the increase of total labor demand. In other words, the consumption level will drop significantly after retirement, and the increase of the elderly labor force caused by delayed retirement can expand consumption, thus improving the "derived demand" of the labor force.

Therefore, many institutions and scholars believe that the increase in the supply of elderly labor force is conducive to economic development and the improvement of employment rate. For example, the World Bank believes that the supply of elderly labor can expand the scale of the economy and increase the total demand for a long time, thus providing more employment opportunities. The empirical analysis by Boorsch-Pan Su and schnabel using German data provides evidence for the above viewpoint.

Current empirical research gives inconsistent evidence. It is found that there is a strong substitution relationship between them, and it is also found that there is no substitution relationship between them, even complementary. There are several reasons for this phenomenon: 1 This is related to the development stage of the sample countries. For developed countries, the development speed is relatively stable, the educational structure of all ages is stable, and it is difficult to have drastic industrial restructuring;

For developing countries, especially countries with rapid development like China, the economic system, industrial structure and education level have changed greatly in just a few decades, and the market's preference for different labor skills has also changed greatly. Therefore, the occupational substitution of the elderly and young laborers is rather vague. 2. It is related to the degree of sample subdivision.

For example, Zhang Chuanchuan and Zhao (20 14) distinguished the influence of different genders on the employment of young laborers. Liu Cheng further subdivided the impact of delayed retirement on the employment of young laborers in different industries. Different methods of labor group segmentation will also lead to different conclusions.