How to turn the demographic dividend into a longer-term quality dividend in the future? Expert answers

Source: People's Daily News

Beijing, 20 Jan (People's Daily Online) -- Today, the National Health Commission held a press conference on the progress and experience and practices of implementing the "Decision of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Optimizing the Birth Policy and Promoting the Long-term Balanced Development of the Population."

At the meeting, in response to the reporter's question of "whether the decline in the birth population indicates that the mainland's demographic dividend is shrinking or disappearing", Song Jian, deputy director of the Population and Development Research Center of Chinese Min University, said that the birth population is declining, in fact, the proportion of the 0-14-year-old children's population will continue to decline, while the proportion of the elderly population will rise rapidly. China is still in the window of opportunity for the demographic dividend, but this window is about to close.

Song Jian introduced that the demographic dividend is indeed a concept that has been particularly hot in recent years, and it is itself a concept of population economics. From the perspective of demography, the demographic dividend is closely related to the change of the age structure of the population, so in a sense, the demographic dividend can also be called "structural dividend". The age structure of the population can be divided into three parts, the middle one is the working-age population, the other is the children's population, and the elderly population.

Song Jian pointed out that in the process of population transformation, on the one hand, the decline in fertility rate has caused a significant decline in the proportion of the young population, and at the same time, the proportion of the elderly population has not been so high, which has caused a particularly high proportion of the middle working-age population. This situation is called the demographic dividend opportunity window period, that is to say, it is a window of opportunity, and it may not really become a dividend. Since the reform and opening up, China has fully seized the window of opportunity for the demographic dividend, harvested the demographic dividend, and promoted the rapid development of China's social economy.

"In the future, we must turn the structural dividend into a longer-term quality dividend, fully tap the elderly population and the female population in the population, and fully realize the elderly dividend and gender dividend in the demographic dividend." Song Jian said.