As China's population ageing deepens, addressing demographic shifts while advancing common prosperity has become a key policy concern. The silver economy is expected to balance economic growth with social welfare improvement, and is widely believed to play a coordinating role between promoting economic growth and enhancing social welfare. However, its specific moderating mechanism in the relationship between population ageing and common prosperity remains underexamined. Existing research focuses mainly on the macroeconomic consequences of population ageing or explores the silver economy from an industrial perspective, with few studies integrating both aspects within a unified analytical framework. Drawing on the Neo-Cambridge growth model and the overlapping generations (OLG) model, this paper constructs an integrated framework encompassing population ageing, the silver economy, and common prosperity. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) and related sources from 2012 to 2022, this study systematically investigates the interrelations and underlying mechanisms among these three dimensions.

The main findings are as follows. First, population ageing has a significant positive effect on common prosperity, and the silver economy further strengthens this positive effect. Second, the silver economy reinforces the promoting effect of population ageing on common prosperity through three primary channels: optimizing the structure of primary distribution, reducing reliance on government transfer income, and promoting labor participation. These mechanisms operate across both market and government dimensions, reflecting an evolutionary shift from government-led to market-led dynamics. Third, the positive moderating effect of the silver economy exhibits significant heterogeneity. This moderating effect is more pronounced among younger olderhouseholds and urban older households, indicating that the silver economy's moderating effect does not yet have a distinct pro-poor orientation.

By incorporating the silver economy, this study offers a new theoretical perspective on the relationship between population ageing and common prosperity, thereby broadening the research horizon on common prosperity. Its marginal contributions are threefold. First, it extends research on the driving mechanisms of common prosperity by addressing the insufficient attention paid to endogenous market forces. Second, by integrating population ageing, the silver economy, and common prosperity into a unified analytical framework, it reveals the context-dependent nature of demographic shifts' economic consequences, moving beyond the one-sided claim that “ageing inevitably undermines development performance”. Third, using micro-level household data, it overcomes the masking effect of macro-aggregated data on distributional inequality and identifies how the silver economy's moderating effect varies across different population groups, thereby complementing studies on the complexity of governing an ageing society.

The findings provide important policy implications.First, in advancing common prosperity, undue concern about the adverse effects of population ageing is unnecessary. Instead, greater attention should be paid to the structural enabling role of the silver economy. Second, the transition from a government-led to a market-led pathway to common prosperity should be strengthened, alongside better coordination between market-based wage income growth and social security sharing, guiding the silver economy to play a sustained role in optimizing primary distribution, reducing transfer income reliance, and promoting labor participation. Third, the positive moderating effects of the silver economy should be made more inclusive and pro-poor so as to accelerate common prosperity progress among oldest-old households and rural older households.

With the accelerating ageing process of the population, China is facing an unprecedented mortality peak dominated by the older population. Mathematical demography analysis reveals that the evolution of the mortality peak depends on three intertwined demographic factors: (1) historical fertility peaks and troughs play a dominant role in shaping the mortality population, (2) increased survival rates expand the elderly population base, thereby increasing the number of elderly deaths, and (3) period mortality rate declines contribute to reducing the mortality peak. As these three factors have varying effects on different birth cohorts, ages, and periods, age-specific deaths exhibit significant fluctuations. However, when summing up deaths across all ages, the fluctuations at different ages offset each other to some extent, resulting in a relatively smooth trend in the total number of deaths. Although the massive number of deaths among the elderly are a natural outcome of the demographic transition, China’s mortality peak is approaching rapidly and on an unprecedented scale, posing severe challenges to individuals, families, and society as a whole. The government and all sectors of society need to formulate proactive coping strategies as early as possible

Since the 1980s, the sex ratio at birth (SRB) in China has been abnormally high for more than 40 years, and it might take 30 years to return to normal. The 70year SRB transition profoundly affects the population dynamics. Based on the most recent data on SRB, fertility and mortality, this study focuses on the impact of the SRB transition on the age structure in China. The results show that abnormally high SRB has reduced the number of births and thus the population size, thereby has sped up population ageing. Normalizing SRB can alleviate population ageing. Therefore, normalizing SRB could be taken as one of the strategies to actively cope with population ageing, aside from improving gender inequality.

The future is uncertain, and so are the future populations. This uncertainty is a fundamental aspect of population dynamics. It is affected by various factors such as socio-economic development, technological advances, and even cultural change. Understanding demographic uncertainty is essential in policy-making based on population projection. In recent decades, various methods have been developed to describe the uncertainty, including probabilistic forecast. However, such methods have not got enough attention in China, where the population tends to be highly uncertain due to rapid demographic transition and social transformation. In this paper, we investigate the uncertainty and its policy implications. Specifically, we focus on three major aspects of China's population:the number of births, particularly in the era of universal two-child policy, the number of total population, and the target population of regional planning. Overlooking or underestimating demographic uncertainty can lead to misleading projection results for policy makers and the public. We are in need of developing methods for China's population projections.

Based on the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Study (CLHLS 2002~2011),this study assesses the age trajectories of the loss of independence in daily living for five cohorts aged 65~69,70~79,80~89,90~99 and 100+ at the 2002 survey,respectively,both at the individual and the population level.Results show that the decline of independence at the population level is more gradual than that at the individual level.A decomposition analysis further reveals that the difference in the pace of decline of independence can be largely attributed to selective mortality and loss to follow up.Moreover,such difference varies across cohorts.For the population as a whole,a longer life expectancy does not necessarily result in a rapid decline of independence.For individuals, however, prolonging lifespan tend to be accompanied with deterioration of independence except for the young old.

As life expectancy has risen spectacularly since the mid-nineteenth century，and at present，is high in many countries，increasing attention has been drawn to life disparity-how much lifespans differ among individuals．Life disparity is important because it measures uncertainty in the timing of death．Reducing this uncertainty increases the value of both private and public investments in education and training，and can factor into life course decisions such as retirement planning and the adoption of healthy behavior．The past six decades have witnessed great improvements in life expectancy in China， particularly since the reform and opening up in the late 1970s．Previous studies have well documented the levels，patterns and regional variations of mortality in China．But so far no study has focused on life disparity．This paper aims to fill in this gap with in-depth analysis of the trends in life disparity of China under comprehensive international comparison．We find that the improvement of life disparity that has been made so far in China can partially be attributed to the China-characteristic healthcare system and health-related public policies．

 As life expectancy has risen spectacularly since the mid-nineteenth century，and at pres- ent，is high in many countries，increasing attention has been drawn to life disparity-how much lifespans differ among individuals．Life disparity is important because it measures uncertainty in the timing of death. Reducing this uncertainty increases the value of both private and public investments in education and training，and can factor into life course decisions such as retirement planning and the adoption of healthy behavior．The past six decades have witnessed great improvements in life expectancy in China， particularly since the reform and opening up in the late 1970s．Previous studies have well documented the levels，patterns and regional variations of mortality in China．But so far no study has focused on life disparity．This paper aims to fill in this gap with in-depth analysis of the trends in life disparity of China under comprehensive international comparison．We find that the improvement of life disparity that has been made so far in China can partially be attributed to the China-characteristic healthcare system and health-related public policies．