The effect of healthy human capital improvement on savings and growth: An empirical study based on China’s inter-provincial panel data

Abstract

The traditional life cycle hypothesis believes that the aging of population will not only drag down the level of social savings, but also adversely affect economic growth. However, the human capital factor may change the influence mechanism of population structure change. This study attempts to focus on a specific factor of improving healthy human capital (HHC), through endogenous treatment of fertility rate and survival rate, considering the aging expectation of rational man, to explore its effect de facto on savings rate and economic growth while using the inter-provincial panel data of China from 1996 to 2012 to verify the inherent logical relationship between the rapid improvement of HHC and the “high savings-high growth” model. The findings of this research are as follows: The improvement of HHC is an important factor to improve China’s savings rate and economic growth in corresponding period. It means that the improvement of HHC is enough to alter the mechanism of macro-impact of demographic changes, and therefore constitutes a crucial long-term regulation and control means outside the adjustment of birth policy. Among them, promoting public environmental governance, improving the social security system, strengthening individual expectations for health and driving the expected behavior of aging while achieving linkages with investment in educational human capital are worthy of attention.

Keywords

• healthy human capital
• aging expectation
• savings rate
• economic growth