Author(s)

Zehong Li, Canyu Guo, Xinchen Leng

Corresponding Author

Xinchen Leng

ABSTRACT

China's economy is facing the dual challenges of the accelerating aging process and the transformation of China's export trade structure. Based on 630 provincial panel data from 2000 to 2020, this paper uses a fixed-effect model to study the impact of population aging on the technical complexity of export products. The results show that the aging of the population significantly affects the technical complexity of export, and the ratio of the elderly population positively impacts the technical complexity of export products. In the study of regional heterogeneity, it is found that there is a significant positive relationship between population aging and export technology complexity in the eastern, central, and western regions. In addition, through the intermediary effect, this paper concludes that population aging indirectly promotes the improvement of export technology complexity through the impact mechanism of R&D, investment, education expenditure, urbanization process, and consumption level.

KEYWORDS

population aging, technical complexity of export products, fixed effect model, merchandise trade