Aging Industries in the Regional Economy: How to Support an Aging China?

Abstract

This study investigates the law, distribution characteristics, and changing trend of the coordinated development of China’s aging industry and regional economy, as well as the factors which influence the degree of coordination between the aging industry and economic development on the provincial level. In doing so, we construct a comprehensive evaluation index system of the aging industry and regional economy development, introduce an entropy weight coupling model, and measure the coupling and coordinated development level of the two systems using data of 31 selected Chinese provinces (municipalities) from 2009 to 2019. The spatial Dubin model is then used to empirically analyze the influencing factors and spatial effect decomposition of the coordinated development of the aging industry and regional economy. We reach the following main results: (1) China’s aging industry is developing unevenly, with substantial regional differences, but these differences have narrowed in recent years. (2) China’s regional economic disparities have widened. The eastern regions have the highest level of development, while the northeast region’s growth rate of GDP has declined since 2014. (3) The coordinated development of the aging industry and regional economy in one region of China has a positive impact on its neighboring regions, and all Chinese regions exhibits high–high, low–low agglomeration characteristics in terms of their degree of coordination. (4) A variety of socioeconomic and demographic factors affect the coordinated development of the aging industry and regional economy. An important implication of these findings is that, China should improve population structure, population quality, and economic development quality in order to achieve a high-level coordinated development of the aging industry and regional economy.