[2023-01-18]纽约时报 - 观点：中国人口下降带来的问题
![]() By Paul Krugman
作者：保罗克鲁格曼
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China’s population declined last year, for the first time since the mass deaths associated with Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward in the 1960s. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that China has announced that its population declined. Many observers are skeptical about Chinese data; I’ve been at conferences when China released, say, new data on economic growth, and many people responded by asking not “Why was growth 7.3 percent?” but rather “Why did the Chinese government decide to say that it was 7.3 percent?”
去年中国人口出现下降，这是自 1960 年代毛泽东灾难性的大跃进导致大规模死亡以来的首次下降。 或者更准确地说，中国已经宣布其人口下降。 许多观察家对中国的数据持怀疑态度。 当中国发布经济增长的新数据时，我参加过会议，许多人的问题不是“为什么增长是 7.3%？” 而是“为什么中国政府决定说是 7.3%？”
In any case, it’s clear that China’s population is or soon will be at a peak; the best bet is probably that population has been falling for several years. But why consider this a problem? After all, in the 1960s and 1970s, many people worried that the world was facing a crisis of overpopulation, with China one of the biggest sources of that pressure. And the Chinese government itself tried to limit population growth with its famous one-child policy.
无论如何，很明显中国的人口正处于或即将达到顶峰； 最好的选择可能是人口数年来一直在下降。 但为什么认为这是一个问题呢？ 毕竟，在 1960 年代和 1970 年代，许多人担心世界正面临人口过剩的危机，而中国是这种压力的最大来源之一。 而中国政府本身也试图通过其著名的独生子女政策来限制人口增长。
So why isn’t population decline good news, an indication that China and the world in general will have fewer people placing demands on the resources of a finite planet?
那么，为什么人口下降不是好消息，这不正说明中国和整个世界对有限的地球资源的需求更少了吗？
The answer is that a declining population creates two major problems for economic management. These problems aren’t insoluble, given intellectual clarity and political will. But will China rise to the challenge? That’s far from clear.
答案是人口下降给经济管理带来了两个主要问题。 考虑到知识的清晰度和政治意愿，这些问题并非无法解决。 但中国会迎难而上吗？ 这还远不清楚。
The first problem is that a declining population is also an aging population — and in every society I can think of we depend on younger people to support older people. In the United States the three big social programs are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; the first two are explicitly targeted at seniors, and even the third spends most of its money on older Americans and the disabled.
第一个问题是人口减少也是人口老龄化——在我能想到的每个社会中，我们都依赖年轻人来供养老年人。 在美国，三大社会计划是社会保障、医疗保险和医疗补助； 前两个明确针对老年人，甚至第三个也将大部分资金花在了美国老年人和残疾人身上。
In each case, the funding for these programs ultimately depends on taxes paid by working-age adults, and concerns about America’s long-term fiscal future arise largely from a rising old-age dependency ratio — that is, a rising ratio of seniors to those of working age.
在每一种情况下，这些项目的资金最终都取决于适龄工人缴纳的税款，而对美国长期财政未来的担忧主要源于不断上升的老年抚养比——也就是说，老年人与适龄工人的比率不断上升。
China’s social safety net is relatively undeveloped compared with ours, but older Chinese nonetheless depend on government aid — especially the state pension. And China’s old-age dependency ratio is skyrocketing. This means that China will either have to inflict a lot of economic pain on its elderly, sharply raise taxes on younger citizens or both.
与我们相比，中国的社会保障体系相对欠发达，但中国老年人仍然依赖政府援助——尤其是国家养老金。 而中国的老年抚养比正在飙升。 这意味着中国要么不得不给老年人带来很多经济痛苦，要么大幅提高年轻人的税收，要么两者兼而有之。
The other problem is subtler but also serious. To maintain full employment, a society must keep overall spending high enough to keep up with the economy’s productive capacity. You might think that a shrinking population, which reduces capacity, would make this task easier. But a falling population — especially a falling working-age population — tends to reduce some important kinds of spending, especially investment spending. After all, if the number of workers is declining, there’s less need to build new factories, office buildings and so on; if the number of families is declining, there’s not much need to build new housing.
另一个问题更微妙但也很严重。 为了保持充分就业，一个社会必须保持足够高的总体支出，以跟上经济的生产能力。 您可能认为人口减少会降低容量，这会使这项任务变得更容易。 但人口下降——尤其是劳动年龄人口下降——往往会减少一些重要的支出，尤其是投资支出。 毕竟，如果工人的数量在下降，就没有必要建造新的工厂、办公楼等； 如果家庭数量在下降，那么就没有必要建造新的住房。
The result is that a society with a declining working-age population tends, other things equal, to experience persistent economic weakness. Japan illustrates the point: Its working-age population peaked in the mid-1990s, and the country has struggled with deflation ever since, despite decades of extremely low interest rates. More recently, other wealthy countries whose demographies have begun to resemble Japan’s have faced similar issues, although these issues have been sidelined — temporarily, I’d argue — by the burst of inflation set off by policy responses to Covid-19.
结果是，在其他条件相同的情况下，一个劳动力人口减少的社会往往会经历持续的经济疲软。 日本说明了这一点：其劳动力人口在 1990 年代中期达到顶峰，尽管几十年来利率极低，此后该国一直在与通货紧缩作斗争。 最近，其他人口结构开始与日本相似的富裕国家也面临着类似的问题，尽管这些问题已经被搁置了——但我认为是暂时的——只是应对武汉肺炎引发的通胀爆发而已。
To be fair to the Japanese, they’ve arguably handled the issue of population decline pretty well, avoiding mass unemployment in part by propping up their economy with deficit spending. This has led to high levels of public debt, but there has been no hint that investors are losing faith in Japanese solvency.
公平地说，他们可以说很好地处理了人口下降的问题，通过赤字支出来支撑经济，从而避免了大规模失业。 这导致了公共债务水涨船高，但没有迹象表明投资者正在对日本的偿付能力失去信心。
But can China — whose working-age population has been falling since 2015 — manage things equally well? There are good reasons to be skeptical.
但中国——其劳动年龄人口自 2015 年以来一直在下降——能否处理得同样好？ 有充分的理由持怀疑态度。
For China has long had a wildly unbalanced economy. For reasons I admit I don’t fully understand, policymakers there have been reluctant to allow the full benefits of past economic growth to pass through to households, and that has led to relatively low consumer demand.
因为长期以来，中国的经济极度失衡。 由于我不完全理解的原因，那里的政策制定者一直不愿意让过去经济增长的全部好处传递给家庭，这导致了相对较低的消费需求。
Instead, China has sustained its economy with extremely high rates of investment, far higher even than those that prevailed in Japan at the height of its infamous late-1980s bubble. Normally, investing in the future is good, but when extremely high investment collides with a falling population, much of that investment inevitably yields diminishing returns.
相反，中国以极高的投资率维持其经济，甚至远高于日本 20 世纪 80 年代末臭名昭著的泡沫高峰期的投资率。 通常，对未来的投资是好的，但当极高的投资与人口下降相冲突时，大部分投资不可避免地会产生递减的回报。
Indeed, at this point China’s economy appears to rely on an incredibly bloated real estate sector, which sure looks like a financial crisis waiting to happen.
事实上，在这一点上，中国经济似乎依赖于一个令人难以置信的膨胀的房地产行业，这看起来肯定像是一场拭目以待的金融危机。
It would be foolish to assume that China can’t cope with its demographic issues. After all, if we’re taking the longer view, China has been an incredible success story, transforming itself from a poor, developing nation into an economic superpower in just a few decades.
认为中国无法应对其人口问题是愚蠢的。 毕竟，如果我们放眼长远，中国是一个令人难以置信的成功故事，在短短几十年内从一个贫穷的发展中国家转变为一个经济超级大国。
On the other hand, I’m old enough to remember when every other business book seemed to have a samurai warrior on the cover, promising to teach the management secrets that were turning Japan into the world’s economic leader.
另一方面，我还记得以前所有其他商业书籍的封面上似乎都有武士，承诺传授让日本成为世界经济领导者的管理秘诀。
The point is that for economies, as with investment funds, past performance is no guarantee of future results. We don’t know how much China’s demographic challenges will cause it to stumble, but there are good reasons to be concerned; I’ve heard pessimists describe the situation in China as similar to that of post-boom Japan without the same high level of social cohesion that allowed government and society to cushion the fall.
关键在于，对于经济体而言，与投资基金一样，过去的表现并不能保证未来的结果。 我们不知道中国面临的人口挑战会给它带来多大的挫折，但我们有充分的理由感到担忧； 我听说悲观主义者将中国的情况描述为与金融泡沫之后的日本相似，但社会凝聚力水平不高，无法让政府和社会缓冲衰退。
Oh, and China is a superpower, with an authoritarian and seemingly erratic leader. I don’t think it’s alarmist to worry about how it will react if its economy performs poorly.
哦，中国是一个超级大国，拥有一位专制且貌似不按常理出牌的领导人。 我认为人们担心中国如何应对经济下滑并不是危言耸听。标红字体均为楼主更改，与原文作者无关。
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