<p>China has experienced both rapid population aging and mass adoption of industrial robots over the past two decades. Motivated by these facts, this paper exploits differences in county historical fertility rates as an instrument variable to estimate the causal effects of population aging on robot adoption in China. We find that rapid population aging spurs the manufacturing sector’s industrial robot adoption, and the effect accounts for approximately 17.5% of the increase in robot adoption during our sample period. Our mechanism analysis reveals that population aging leads to shortages of middle-aged workers and exacerbates workers’ concerns about future pension burdens. These findings highlight the role of automation technologies in mitigating secular stagnation under the global population aging trend in the near future.</p>