The Spatiotemporal Elasticity of Age Structure in China’s Interprovincial Migration System

Abstract

The supply and demand of labour in the market can often experience profound transformations as a result of an ageing population. This can substantially impact the sustainable development of human society. Since the 1970s, China’s internal migration has continued to increase, but there has been a shift toward an ageing trend since the year 2000. How does the change of age structure interact with socioeconomic development to produce changes in the supply and demand of labour over space and time? This study constructs a spatial dynamic panel data model of interprovincial migration flows in China from 1985 to 2015 in order to quantify the spatiotemporal impacts of age structure on migration. The preliminary results indicate that age structure plays the most important role among regional socioeconomic characteristics of migration, dominated by the large supply, demand, and cross elasticities of labour population. Labour demand and the cross elasticities of total dependency ratio rank second. Comparatively, the total elasticities of regional GDP and wage levels on migration flows are not as significant as expected. This study lays the groundwork for identifying the interaction mechanisms of migration systems and provides important insights on regional sustainable development from the perspective of ageing.