This journal is one of the earliest journals on population science in China. It is issued worldwide and indexed by CSSCI, and it is listed as the national Chinese core periodicaland the core periodical on population science.
Editor-in-Chief Yu Xiao
Deputy Editor-in-Chief Wang Xiaofeng, Wang Huabo
Editorial Board Wang Guangzhou, Wang Jinying, Yi Hao, Tian Yipeng, Sun Changzhi, Zhu Yu, Zhang Shiwei, Qiu Hong, Lu Jiehua, Chen Yingzi, Li Shuzhuo, Fan Lida, Yang Chenggang, Yang
Based on the panel data of 31 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) in China from 1997 to 2016, this paper comprehensively analyzes the impact of population aging on economic vitality and its mechanism of action. First, from the respective impacts of aging and fixed asset investment, on the one hand, aging has slowed down economic vitality, and the aging of the eastern region has the most obvious inhibitory effect on economic vitality. On the other hand, fixed asset investment as a main cause has been positively promoting economic vitality, although this role apparently characterized by regional heterogeneity. It is worth noting that fixed asset investment in the eastern region has a negative impact on economic vitality. Second, aging and fixed-asset investment have a further impact on economic vitality through synergistic mechanisms. On the one hand, the increase in fixed asset investment has reduced the aging effect on economic vitality, and vice versa. On the other hand, the panel threshold model shows that when fixed asset investment crosses the threshold, the effect of aging on economic vitality would be turned from inhibition to promotion. In addition, we discussed the mediating path of aging and fixed asset investment to economic vitality. Both of them will have an impact on economic vitality through three types of intermediary: industrial structure, employment, and technological innovation, but the mechanisms of impact are significantly different. On the one hand, aging has a negative impact on economic vitality by affecting employment and mitigating technological innovation, and aging has a positive impact on economic vitality through upgrading industrial structure. On the other hand, fixed asset investment has a positive impact on economic vitality through increased employment, technological innovation and upgrading of industrial structure.
Although the family-planning policy in China has been adjusted in recent year, its effect on fertility has received wide attention but not been verified by empirical research. As the migrants have a higher percentage of women of childbearing age than the general population, their response to the new policy might be more sensitive and noticeable. Using the data of China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) 2011–2017, this paper explored the determinants and the trend of irreversible contraceptive use among migrant women in China by employing the hierarchical APC cross-classified random effects model (HAPC-CCREM). This research not only substantiated the influence of individual, family and regional-level factors on the pattern of contraceptive use on migrants but identified the age-period-cohort (APC) effect. The results showed that the proportion of irreversible contraceptive use positively related to age and different birth cohorts shows various characteristics. In particular, the 1976–1984 cohorts greatly influenced by the strict one-child policy were more likely to use the irreversible contraceptive methods, while the younger cohorts tended to choose reversible methods. Period effect is notably significant, indicated by the evidence that the use of irreversible methods decreased sharply with the introduction of new family-planning policy in 2015. In addition, the period effect varied among the groups with different childbearing experience, whereas child gender could not account for the period or cohort effect. Our findings suggest that the trend of contraceptive use among migrants is shaped by long-term period factors with far-reaching influence from family-planning policy in particular.
According to United Nations standards, China has entered aging society in 1999, and the aging is deepening gradually. Along with the deepening of China’s aging, people’s education level is also rising, especially among young people, which makes the education of children usually higher than that of their parents. Since Grossman (1972) put forward the theory that education will have a positive impact on health, a large amount of literature both at home and abroad has proved the relationship between them. However, the current research basically ignores the impact of adult children’s education on their parents’ health. By using 2015 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) data and OLS and the instrumental variable methods, this article examines the impact of adult children’s education on the health of middle-aged and elderly parents. Considering that a family may have more than one child, this article takes the samples of the most educated children as the benchmark regression, and uses the samples of the least educated children to test the results to ensure the robustness of the results. The results showed that adult children’s education had a significant positive impact on the health of middle-aged and elderly parents. The samples with the least education were used for the test, and the results did not change. Heterogeneity analysis found that there was age heterogeneity in the impact of adult children’s education on parents’ health, that is, adult children’s education has a greater impact on parents’ health in the age group of 60 or above. Further analysis of the impact mechanism found that adult children’s education can improve their health by relaxing the budgetary constraints faced by parents and optimizing their healthy behavior. Based on the above analysis, we believe that at the present stage, in the areas where parents are less educated, especially in poor areas and rural areas, increasing investment in the education of the next generation can significantly improve parents’ health.
Appearance discrimination is a long-standing employment discrimination hidden in the labor market, and is often neglected because it is difficult to measure accurately. Currently, the term facial attractiveness (or beauty score) appears frequently on the Internet and in life, and attracts a lot of public attention. This is because facial attractiveness (or beauty score) not only affects job seekers’ employment opportunities, but also closely relates to wage levels and career development. Based on the data from the surveys of the employment situation of postgraduates of Class of 2016 and Class of 2017 of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, this paper investigates the effect of facial attractiveness on the starting salaries of finance and economics postgraduates and its mechanism from the perspectives of appearance discrimination, competence signal and industry selection, by using other-rated facial attractiveness as the instrumental variable for self-rated facial attractiveness and applying the instrumental variable method and the quantile regression decomposition method, and further discusses whether or not high educational attainment (or higher academic degrees) can eliminate the problem of appearance discrimination in the labor market. Our main findings are as follows. The facial attractiveness of finance and economics postgraduates indeed affected their starting salaries, and there existed the beauty premium, but there was no penalty for plainness. The beauty premium was not from competence signal, and the facial attractiveness had nothing to do with postgraduates’ competence training in college. The facial attractiveness significantly affected sector/industry entry, and good-looking people could more easily enter the high-paying service sector represented by finance, and obtained the beauty premium. The results of the quantile regression decomposition further showed that the effect of appearance discrimination on finance and economics postgraduates declined as the starting salary quantile increased, indicating that a higher educational attainment helps to reduce appearance discrimination to some extent. To sum up, facial attractiveness (or beauty score) is indeed precious, and yet competence is still important. All postgraduates should view the face rationally, and improve their looks as well as their intelligence (internal competence). Furthermore, the government should establish and improve the anti-discrimination legal system that is consistent with the market system.
The central plains economic zone is located in the center of China, with large economic aggregate and dense population. Studying the spatial relationship between population and economy in the central plains economic zone has reference significance for promoting the coordinated development of the central region. Based on the population and economic data of China’s central plains economic zone from 1995 to 2015, using the methods of population-economic growth elasticity, geographic concentration, population and economic inconsistency and spatial autocorrelation model, systematic analysis on the population and economic growth of the central plains economic zone coordination relationship, space-time evolution, and spatial correlation structure, the results showed that from the perspective of the coordination between population and economic growth, the population-economic growth elasticity coefficient is 0.05, and the economic growth has non-significant effect on population growth. From the perspective of the spatial-temporal evolution of population and economic distribution, the central region of the central plains economic region is highly concentrated; the economic development is further polarized to the core region, showing a central-peripheral structure. The relationship between population and economic agglomeration is mostly coordinated and advanced, mainly located in the central and northern parts of the central plains economic zone, and its population and economic agglomeration ability is strong. The number of lagged type cities has gradually increased, with economic agglomeration lagging behind population concentration. From the spatial correlation structure of population and economy, the population and economic distribution of the central plains economic region is not strong, and the correlation is weakened. Most cities are distributed in the first and third quadrants, showing a high-high (HH) distribution, and low-low (LL) distribution has large differences in population and economic development in the region, which is not conducive to the coordinated development of population and economy in the central plains economic zone.
