Dose the increasing burden of social endowment affect sustainable development of economy?

• Published in: PloS one 2024-01, Vol.19 (1), p.e0296512-e0296512
• Main Authors: Yu, Zhiyang, Chen, Jin, Yu, Runfa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Age; Aged; Aging; Analysis; Biology and Life Sciences; Cognitive ability; Ecology and Environmental Sciences; Economic aspects; Economic development; Economic growth; Economic impact; Economics; Endowment; Endowments; Environmental aspects; Family Characteristics; Financial Management; Health aspects; Health care; Health care industry; Health services; Humans; Innovations; Interest rates; Investments; Labor productivity; Life expectancy; Macroeconomics; Older people; People and Places; Physical Sciences; Population; Population Dynamics; Public health; Research and Analysis Methods; Security systems; Social aspects; Social Sciences; Sustainability; Sustainable Development; Technological change; Transnationalism
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0296512

The rapid increase in the number of older people under the background of population aging has gradually changed the disease spectrum of society, making aging diseases more prevalent, and increasing the demand for health care services, medical and health services, and health insurance among older people, ultimately leading to increasing household and social spending on old age. This study is conducted to assess the impact of those spending burden on the sustainable development of economy and find out some practical and effective solutions. This paper constructs a theoretical model to illustrate the relationship between the old-age dependency ratio and the marginal product of capital (MPK), and then establishes a two-way fixed effect model based on transnational panel data of 81 countries from 1981 to 2017 to verify this relationship empirically. This paper finds that, after controlling a series of variables, an increased burden of old-age dependency leads to a decline in the MPK, a key macroeconomic variable and also a sustainable development criteria, but in which health care, health security systems, and technological innovation play a key and moderating role. The conclusion is also valid after tackling the problem of endogeneity with different methods, like two-stage least squares (TSLS) and the generalized methods of moments (GMM). Overall, before population aging, countries that are old-but-not-rich should encourage more supply-side investments in public health system or technological innovation, and adjust retirement system, or gradually encourage childbearing to strive for time and space for later sustainable development of public health system and economy.