This paper employs industrial robot installations that represent the level of smart manufacturing as the proxy variable of artificial intelligence(AI). Based on crosscountry panel data and China’s provincial panel data, we create a two-stage least square(2 SLS) regression model to examine the effect of an aging population on AI applications and AI’s effect on economic growth. In this manner, we aim to test whether AI has a substitutive effect on labor against the backdrop of an aging society and the kind of such a substitutive effect. Our findings suggest that the labor shortage arising from an aging society will prompt an economy to adopt smart manufacturing more broadly, i.e. an aging society is a driver of AI development. Smart manufacturing has a positive effect on local GDP and helps shore up the slowing economy resulting from an aging society. AI is an important tool for coping with the challenges of an aging society. Current AI development is an "induced innovation," and its substitutive relationship with labor is a "supplemental substitution" rather than "crowding-out substitution." If these characteristics are properly maintained, AI will contribute more to China’s economy against the backdrop of an aging society. 

本文将人口结构变迁所导致的消费需求变化、行业的盈利与行业股票的回报联系起来研究。具体来说,不同商品的消费者年龄结构会有不同。基于对未来人口结构的预测,能预测各个行业因人口结构变化所致的需求变化,进而预测行业的盈利状况。基于中国A股市场数据的实证结果表明,人口结构变迁信息的需求变化估计能很好地预测行业盈利水平,但无法很好地预测股票的未来回报。另外,本文没有发现基于人口结构变化构建的多空投资组合能获得超额回报。企业可以将人口信息用于决策来获得盈利,但是投机者却无法做到。