China's 40 Years Demographic Dividend and Labor Supply: The Quantity Myth

15:00-16:00, Friday, May 26, 2023

212, Boxue Building, DUFE

Xin Meng is Professor of Economics at the Australian National University. Xin is also an editor of Journal of Labor Economics, a fellow of Australian Academy of Social Sciences, and member of various economic associations and societies. Xin's research spans four main themes: 1. The Chinese labour market during transition; 2. The influence of institutions and culture on gender discrimination in developing and developed countries; 3. The economic implications of rural-urban migration in developing countries and the economic assimilation of immigrants in developed countries; and 4. Economic and behavioural implications of major catastrophes. Xin spent over ten years leading a major research project on the Rural-Urban Migration in China (the RUMiC). The project conducted a panel survey of rural-urban migrants for nine consecutive years (2008-2016) and the first three waves of data are available publically. Xin's research has been supported by multiple funders including the Australian Research Council's Discovery and Linkage Project schemes on five occasions, as well as by organisatons such as the Australian Government Department, AusAID, the Ford Foundation and World Bank. Xin's work has been published in leading journals including Science, Review of Economic Studies, The Economic Journal, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Public Economics, among others.

In the past forty years the Chinese economy achieved miracle growth and many attributed a significant part of this to China's favourable labour supply flowing from the "demographic dividend": a larger share of working age population (WAPS). Currently, this dividend is slipping away and many in China are very concerned. Against this background I set out to examine the contributions of various dimensions of China's changing WAPS and its impact on economic growth. I show that between 1982-2015 the increase in the WAPS was offset by a decline in the labour force participation rate, resulting in a very limited increase in the quantity of labour supply. I then estimate the association between regional variations in economic growth and changes in factors such as population size, WAPS, migration, education. The results lend little support to the view that increasing WAPS played a major role in China's economic growth over this period.

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