How do you think China's demographic dividend is disappearing?

As a labor force, people are the key factor of a country's economic development. If in a country's population structure, the wealth created by the labor force is higher than the wealth consumed by the whole society, the labor force will inevitably increase with the increase of the total population. At this time, the huge population base or its growth is no longer a burden to the country's overall economic development, but is beneficial to the country's economic development, which means that there is a demographic dividend in the country's economic development. On the contrary, its population has brought a heavy burden to society, so there is no demographic dividend in this country, which shows that there is something wrong with its economic structure or social structure.

In fact, this problem is not complicated, and we can simplify it into the following model to understand it analogously:

Suppose there is a big family, in which there are more people engaged in production than those who can't, and each person engaged in production can earn at least two people; This family changes with time. Of course, some people will be born, some will grow up, some will work, some will get sick, some will quit their jobs and some will die. But no matter how it changes, as long as a certain fertility rate can be maintained, the overall wealth of this family will always increase rather than decrease because of the increase in the number of people engaged in production or the improvement of production efficiency. The truth of a country's economic development is actually no different from this in essence.

From this perspective, broadly speaking, all countries in a state of economic development should actually have a demographic dividend.

The decline in the demographic dividend also means that the country's economic development has begun to slow down.

Assuming that a country's employment rate is relatively sufficient, if a country's population is insufficient, in order to solve the demographic dividend problem, two measures can be taken logically: one is to transform the economic structure, improve the quality of personnel and enhance labor productivity; Second, stimulate the fertility rate or introduce foreign labor. Generally speaking, these two measures should go hand in hand.

Take western countries as an example, the increase of fertility rate or the introduction of foreign labor force can actually promote their economic development more than the unilateral increase of labor productivity. Therefore, western countries generally introduce fertility incentive policies to curb the decline of fertility rate; On the other hand, it also actively introduces foreign labor. For example, a major role played by the EU in the economy is actually to let cheap labor from Central and Eastern Europe flow into Western Europe. Assuming that European countries can effectively train foreign refugees, resolve cultural conflicts, and make them become the labor force instead of consuming European welfare or causing social problems, in fact, absorbing refugees and even making them immigrants is actually beneficial to the long-term development of European economy as a whole. The same is true for Britain, but because of pessimism about the effectiveness of solving foreign immigrants and absorbing refugees, Britain has to reluctantly withdraw from the EU, which is equivalent to giving up the huge labor and consumer market. Therefore, in order to solve this cost, Britain will inevitably turn its attention to China, which is also the deep-seated reason why Britain has deepened its relations with China in recent years.

The same is true for the United States and Japan. If we can effectively increase their labor force through immigration and other measures, it will be beneficial to their overall economic development. However, if the government's measures cannot effectively eliminate the corresponding side effects, on the one hand, it will exclude immigrants, on the other hand, its fertility rate and population quality can not be effectively improved, then in the long run, its economic development will stagnate.

In the past, China's demographic dividend was mainly caused by its huge population and its growth. Of course, if we don't deepen the reform of economic structure, this theoretical demographic dividend is impossible to achieve. In recent years, China's population has stopped growing, so many people are worried that China's demographic dividend will disappear. But it won't. Because China's population base is too large and labor productivity is low for a long time, compared with developed countries, China's average labor productivity still has a lot of room for improvement, so the demographic dividend brought by the improvement of labor productivity will last for a long time.

Moreover, as long as the government takes effective management measures, China can gradually and reasonably introduce labor from neighboring countries in Africa and Southeast Asia. In fact, there are quite a few foreigners working and employed in China, including those from Europe, the United States, Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, Africa and Asian countries. In addition, the "One Belt, One Road" policy actually links China's economic development with other countries in the world, which greatly promotes the demographic dividend of other countries in the world, and at the same time effectively increases the demographic dividend of China. China is strongly leading the world in promoting the demographic dividend.