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<p>The widespread aging of populations around the world has intensified concerns about its impact on economies, especially the productivity and innovative performance. This paper investigates how population aging affects regional patenting capacity using census data from China’s prefecture-level cities (2000–2015). Based on Pseudo Poisson Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimation, we find that population aging is generally associated with a decline in innovation output. Furthermore, we find that younger and older workers can serve as substitutes in the knowledge production process, while middle-aged and older workers exhibit complementary effects. In addition, differences in regional age structure account for roughly one-seventh of the observed innovation gap across Chinese regions. These findings suggest that fostering collaboration between workers from different age groups may help mitigate the negative impact of aging on regional innovation.</p>

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Does population aging hinder regional innovation? A perspective on complementarity and substitution effects

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年3月14日

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  • Min Zhang,
  • Xiaochen Zhang

摘要

The widespread aging of populations around the world has intensified concerns about its impact on economies, especially the productivity and innovative performance. This paper investigates how population aging affects regional patenting capacity using census data from China’s prefecture-level cities (2000–2015). Based on Pseudo Poisson Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimation, we find that population aging is generally associated with a decline in innovation output. Furthermore, we find that younger and older workers can serve as substitutes in the knowledge production process, while middle-aged and older workers exhibit complementary effects. In addition, differences in regional age structure account for roughly one-seventh of the observed innovation gap across Chinese regions. These findings suggest that fostering collaboration between workers from different age groups may help mitigate the negative impact of aging on regional innovation.