The Heterogeneous Impact of Changes in the Age Structure of China’s Elderly Population on Regional Economic Development

Currently, the impact of population aging on economic development is mainly explored from the dimension of time, ignoring the Heterogeneity between the two. In this paper, we start by measuring the regional economic development level index, use the entropy value method to solve the index weights, and calculate the regional economic development level index using the linear weighting method. The regional development level index is used as an explanatory variable to construct the baseline regression model and the dynamic panel model for the change in the age structure of the elderly population. The panel data of 31 provinces (cities/autonomous regions) in China are used as examples to explore the heterogeneous effects of age structure changes on regional economic development of the elderly population. The results show that when the age structure change of the elderly population increases by 1%, the regional economic development level rises by 0.782%, and the age structure change of the elderly population is positively and significantly affecting the quality of economic development in the central and western regions at the 1% level. The regression coefficient of population aging in the low level stage is 0.007. The effect on the regional economic development level is significantly positive at the 1%. The age structure change of the elderly population affects the regional economic development by mediating health consumption expenditure. The age structure change of the elderly population has Heterogeneity in regional economic development in terms of period, region, and level at different stages.