By Jia Shen, Department of Development Strategy and Regional Economy, DRC

Research Report, No.21, 2019 (Total 5521) 2019-2-27

Abstract: Since 2010, the population size in the Yangtze River Delta region has become stabilized in light of total national population growth. Among them, the number of people of Shanghai and Jiangsu province in the national population began to decline in 2014 and 2010 respectively, while the number of people of Zhejiang province in the national population inched up, and the number of people in Anhui province increased tangibly in the Yangtze River Delta region. The stabilization of population growth in the Yangtze River Delta region is mainly affected by the sustained slowdown of population inflows from other regions. The inter-regional population flow in the Yangtze River Delta region presents the characteristics of “fragmented agglomeration” around the central cities. In terms of population structure, the problem of population aging and unbalanced distribution of human resources in the Yangtze River Delta region has become very prominent. In the future, we need to actively grasp the favorable window period, take the central cities in the region as the leverage for cross-regional coordination, promote the gradient regional integration in a tiered manner in the Yangtze River Delta region, further improve the supporting policies of fiscal transfer payment in different departments of the region, avoid excessive siphon effect on the high-caliber personnel by the first-mover areas through effective system design, and enhance more balanced and effective allocation of high-end production factors in the region.

Key words: population growth, population floating, population structure, Yangtze River Delta