Correlation of air quality with population aging, industrial structure upgrading, and research and development in China based on empirical analysis

Abstract

China’s population has been aging quickly in recent years, putting pressure on the environment. Population aging has also amplified the role of industrial upgrading and research and development (R&D) on environmental quality. Against this backdrop, we investigated the long-run and short-run relationships among population aging, industrial structure upgrading, R&D, and air quality in 30 Chinese provinces from 2006 to 2020. The panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model was first applied in this study. The results revealed that population aging temporarily harmed air quality but improved it over time. The favorable impact of industrial upgrading on air quality was enhanced by population aging, but the positive impact of R&D investment on air quality was reduced. Furthermore, Dumitrescu and Hurlin (D-H) Granger causality tests were adopted to confirm that population aging had a single-way causal link with air quality, whereas industrial upgrading and R&D had dual-way causal associations with air quality.

Keywords:

• air quality
• population aging
• industrial structure upgrading
• R&D investment
• ARDL model

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Funding acquisition, project administration and supervision were conducted by Yang Yu. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Yiming Du and Yulin Chi. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Yiming Du and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request from corresponding author Yang Yu ([email protected]).

Figure 1. Spatial distribution of China’s air quality in 2006.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Funds for First-class Discipline Construction of Beijing University of Chemical Technology [XK1802-5].