The Impact of Population Aging on the Revenue-Expenditure Equilibrium of China's Basic Urban-Rural Residents' Pension Insurance Fund
Abstract
This article utilizes provincial-level data from 31 provinces in China spanning 2013 to 2023, sourced from the EPS Data Platform, to construct a fixed-effects model investigating the impact of population aging on the revenue and expenditure status of basic urban and rural residents' pension insurance funds. The results demonstrate a statistically significant negative effect at the 1% level, indicating that population aging exerts a suppressive influence on the fiscal balance of these pension funds. Robustness of the findings was confirmed through several tests: employing explanatory variables lagged by one period, winsorizing both the dependent and key independent variables, and incorporating additional control variables. Finally, regional heterogeneity analysis across eastern, central, and western China revealed that the pension fund balance in the eastern region is more sensitive to changes in population aging, whereas in the central and western regions, the fund balance ratio is more susceptible to the influence of government subsidies than to aging.
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