CONSTRAINING EFFECTS OF POPULATION DECLINE AND POPULATION AGEING ON RURAL AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIAL PROSPERITY: EVIDENCE FROM PROVINCIAL PANEL DATA IN CHINA, 2008–2023
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21837/pm.v24i43.2097Keywords:
Population Decline, Population Ageing, Agricultural Industrial Prosperity, Regional HeterogeneityAbstract
Rural revitalization evaluation has expanded rapidly in China, yet increasingly large indicator systems can reduce interpretability and weaken policy operability. To address this issue, this study focuses on rural agricultural industrial prosperity (AIP) and measures it using observable agricultural and production-condition indicators from statistical yearbooks. Using provincial panel data for 31 provinces from 2008 to 2023 (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan), this study estimates a two-way fixed effects model to examine the relationship between rural population decline, rural ageing, and AIP. It also tests whether human capital, proxied by the average years of schooling of rural residents, conditions these demographic effects. The results show that population decline is negatively and robustly associated with AIP across alternative index construction methods, ageing measures, lagged specifications, and treatments for census-year or breakpoint shocks and outliers. In contrast, the direct effect of ageing is unstable and mostly insignificant. Moderation results show that the interaction between ageing and education is negative and significant, whereas the interaction between population decline and education is not significant. Regional interaction models further show stronger negative effects in specific regions. Overall, population decline is the more consistently supported demographic correlate of lower AIP, whereas the relationship between ageing and AIP appears to be more conditional. By focusing on AIP within a unified framework, this study provides more interpretable evidence for rural planning and governance under demographic change.
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