This study investigated the impact of population aging on the relationship between exports and economic growth in Korea using the export-led growth hypothesis framework with an autoregressive distributed lag model and data for the period 1990–2021. We found that export positively influenced economic growth. However, the effect of export on economic growth was negative considering population aging. Furthermore, the negative effect of export increased with aging. Our results also show a positive effect of population aging on economic growth in the long run, which implies the dominance of the human capital effect over the negative productivity effect. Hence, our results indicate that developed countries seeking to achieve sustainable growth through exports should control the population aging problem. Our study suggests two possible policies for solving the population aging problem: promote births and encourage immigration growth.

本研究利用出口导向型增长假说框架、自回归分布式滞后模型和 1990-2021 年数据，调查了人口老龄化对韩国出口与经济增长之间关系的影响。我们发现出口对经济增长有积极影响。然而，考虑到人口老龄化，出口对经济增长的影响为负。此外，出口的负面影响随着老龄化而加剧。我们的研究结果还表明，从长远来看，人口老龄化对经济增长具有积极影响，这意味着人力资本效应对生产率的负面影响占主导地位。因此，我们的研究结果表明，寻求通过出口实现可持续增长的发达国家应该控制人口老龄化问题。