经济学人下载:中国人口老化

Over the next few years China will undergo a huge demographic shift. The share of people over 60 in the total population will increase from 12.5% in 2010 to 20% in 2020. By 2030 their number will double from today’s 178m. The dependency ratio—the number of people of non-working age, both young and old, as a proportion of those of working age—will bottom out between 2012 and 2015 at an exceptionally low level before rebounding, says a report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Put another way, China’s “demographic dividend”—the availability of lots of young workers—which helped fuel its growth will soon begin to disappear. The overall population will start to grow faster than that of working age. One trigger for this could be a sharp economic slowdown. Many Chinese have recently become familiar with the “Lewis turning point”, named after a 20th-century economist from St Lucia, Arthur Lewis, who said that industrial wages start to rise quickly when a country’s rural labour surplus dries up.

在未来的几年中，中国将会经历一次巨大的人口转变。预计，六十岁以上的人口占总人口的比例将会从2010年的12.5%上升到2020年的20%。到了2030年，中国六十岁以上的人口数量将会是现在178万的两倍之多。中国社会科学院的一份报告指出，中国的抚养率——衡量包括年轻人和老年人的非劳动年龄人口和劳动年龄人口的比值——将会在2012年至2015年之间降到一个极低的水平，直到反弹。另一种说法是，中国的“人口红利”——大量年轻劳动力的供给——曾经刺激了中国经济的增长，它马上就要开始消失了。中国的总人口数量将开始比劳动年龄人口数量增加的更快。这一旦触发就可能产生一次经济急剧放缓。现在，许多中国人已经对“刘易斯拐点”十分熟悉了，“刘易斯拐点”是以一位二十世纪来自圣卢西亚的经济学家Arthur Lewis的名字来命名的，他曾指出当一个国家的农村劳动剩余消失时，该国的工业工资将开始快速上涨。

One way this will show up is in a proliferation of places like Le Amor. A lot of schools will close down. Wang Feng of the Brookings Institution notes that China’s primary-school enrolment dropped from 25.3m in 1995 to 16.7m in 2008. Revoking the one-child policy would probably not make a big difference. Chinese couples have small families mainly because children are expensive, Mr Wang argues. China’s rapid ageing, combined with a shrinking labour force, will “fundamentally reshape the Chinese economy and society”, he suggests. In the next decade the number of people aged 20-24 will drop by 50%, Mr Wang predicts.

非劳动年龄人口的增长会以像Le Amor.这样的养老院扩张的形式出现。许多学校将会停学。Brookings研究所的王峰指出，中国的中学录取人数从1995年的2530万降到了2008年的1670万。取消独生子女政策可能也不会使这产生较大的改观。王峰指出，中国夫妇选择三口之家是因为抚养孩子的成本高昂。同时，他还指出，中国迅速的老龄化，随同劳动力萎缩会彻底的重塑中国的经济和社会。王峰预计，在未来的几十年中，中国20至24岁人口的数量将会下降到50%。

Optimists believe China still has several more years before the economic impact of an ageing population becomes apparent. China’s commerce minister, Chen Deming, said in March 2010 that the country could still enjoy another decade of “demographic dividends”. In a report last year Morgan Stanley pointed to 80m-100m surplus labourers in the countryside who could be employed in urban areas (although as this special report has argued, that might not be easy). It also expressed optimism about continuing productivity gains from rising levels of education and technology use.

乐观者们相信，中国还要度过好几年老龄人口对经济的冲击才会变得明显。中国商务部部长，陈德铭指出，2010年三月，中国仍然能够享受另外一个十年的“人口红利”。摩根史坦利投资公司在去年的一份报告表明，在中国农村，能够去城市里打工的剩余劳动力还有8000万到1亿人（尽管这份特殊的报告指出这一情况，但是老龄化问题可能不会这么简单）。这还显示出人们对于因为教育水平的提高和技术的使用而引起的生产率的持续增长的乐观。