Abstract The variations of age structure will surely pass on to economic growth through a series of intermediate factors. During the process of population age structure variation, the decrease of dependency load will form a very important “structure dividend” to economic growth——the demographic dividend. However, systematic researches on the relationship between China’s age structure variation and economic growth are still insufficient. This paper studies on the effect of age structure on savings rate in Asia based on the model of HW, and will discuss how to obtain the second dividend during aging in China. The association between the age composition of a nation and its savings rate observed within 17 Asian countries from 1960 to 2009 is re-estimated here. The results show that the demographic transition significantly promotes the saving rates of Asian, while the economic and social development policies in Asia provide opportunities for the use of demographic transition effect. To be specific, the negative correlation between aging and savings rate will be more and more significant and the decrease of child proportion had made a contribution to the increase of savings rate. That lagged savings is assumed exogenous or endogenous has no obvious effect on the results, and real interest rate has bigger effect on the results. During population aging demographic dividend will be sustainable through attracting much money to pension system, rather than savings rate rising and transfer of capital between generations.
2014, Vol. 31 
