从日本经济“危机”看中国二孩政策紧迫性

在刚刚过去的这一年，令人提心吊胆的经济新闻层出不穷。而日本最近的困境可能是最令人寒心的警世故事。这个全球第三大经济体的GDP在2015年第三季度萎缩了0.8%，这也是日本最近7年来第五次在第三季度出现经济衰退。

尽管日本首相安倍晋三付出了巨大的努力，试图让国家摆脱通货紧缩和负增长的困扰，但效果平平。他的提振经济计划包括投入数十亿美元进行大规模刺激，推行结构性劳动力改革，松动银根，但结果却不尽人意。其中，部分原因在于政治压力不断升级，但真正的原因却更加深层：作为全球老龄化最严重的人口，日本的人口数量正在萎缩。

这个岛国的人口在过去十年内下降了0.6%，而65岁以上的人口却增加了20.4%，如今占总人口的比例超过四分之一。面对着未来商品市场的萎缩，日本公司没有意愿进行资本投资。尽管政府的介入使得日本失业率维持在较低的水准，但人们的实际工资却没有实质性增长，所以日本消费者也没有增加开销的理由。

In a year with no shortage of scary economic stories, Japan’s recent woes may be the globe’s most chilling cautionary tale. The world’s third-largest economy shrank by 0.8% in the third quarter of 2015, sending the country into its fifth recession in seven years in November.

That’s despite the herculean efforts of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to rescue the country from the grip of disinflation and negative growth. His plan to jump-start the economy—a multibillion-dollar combination of massive stimulus, structural labor reforms, and monetary easing—has fallen flat, partly because of escalating political pressure. But the real reason goes deeper: Japan’s population, the world’s oldest, is shrinking.

The archipelago’s population has fallen 0.6% in the past decade, while the share of the population older than 65 has risen from 20.4% to more than a quarter. The result is that Japanese companies, facing the prospect of a smaller market for goods, see little reason to invest in new capital spending. And although government intervention has kept unemployment low, real wage growth has been stagnant, giving Japanese consumers little reason to increase their spending either.

不过，与其他国家相比，日本在短期内还不会更差。到2050年，美国、中国和德国等大型经济体的人口中也会有22%超过65岁，这会对经济增长和公共资金支持的社会保障体系产生重大影响。日本的债务占GDP比例为全球最高，不过迫在眉睫的债务也可能导致其他国家的这项比例飙涨。

高频经济公司首席经济学家卡尔•维恩伯格表示：“对我们来说这是一种新的经历。”富有的国家过去一直把整体经济的增长看作理所当然。他说，而日本，“则是一次现实的检验。”

要缓解这个问题，政府能做的事情很有限。日本的量化宽松项目（比美国的规模要大很多）由日本银行每月购买80万亿日元的政府债务。以这样的购买速度，到2027年，中央银行就会拥有日本全部的政府债务，不过，在此之前，这种货币就会崩溃。

全球能避免类似于当下在日本酝酿的财政风暴吗？我们可以从日本移民这个不同的角度来考虑。尽管日本政界的恐慌情绪越来越严重，但年轻的移民可以帮助抵消生育率衰退和人口老龄化带来的影响。毕竟，所有的刺激措施都无法让日本的人口增长。维恩伯格表示：“日本需要的不是偿债能力，它需要的是人口。”（财富中文网）

译者：严匡正

审校：任文科

Compared with the rest of the world, though, Japan may not be worse so much as early. Large economies, such as those in the U.S., China, and Germany, are all projected to have 22% of their population over age 65 by 2050, which has vast implications for economic growth and publicly funded social safety nets. Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio is the highest in the world, but looming obligations could cause others to balloon as well.

“This is a new experience for us,” says Carl Weinberg, chief economist with High Frequency Economics. The rich world has historically taken its collective steady economic growth for granted. Japan, he says, “is a reality check.”

There’s a limit to how much the government can do to alleviate the problem. Japan’s quantitative-easing program (far larger in scale than equivalent efforts in the U.S.) has the Bank of Japan buying 80 trillion yen’s worth of government debt each month. At that rate of purchase, the central bank would own every last dollar of Japanese government debt by the year 2027, though the currency would collapse before that happened.

How can the world avoid a fiscal storm similar to the one now brewing in Japan? It can start by thinking differently from the Japanese on immigration. Despite the panic they increasingly evoke in political circles, younger immigrants can help offset declining birthrates and an aging population. All the stimulus in the world can’t make Japan’s population grow. “Japan doesn’t need liquidity,” Weinberg says. “It needs people.”