近年来，我国人口年龄结构存在的问题愈加明显，人口老龄化趋势也愈来愈严重。《国家积极应对人口老龄化中长期规划》中指出：人口老龄化对经济运行全领域、社会建设各环节、社会文化多方面乃至国家综合实力和国际竞争力都具有深远影响。这样的影响也势必会作用于金融领域中的重要活动之一——公司的融资。因此，本文从公司融资这一角度提出思考：当受到地区性的人口老龄化因素影响时，公司间接融资和直接融资将分别产生怎样的表现？表现是否不同？本文采用2009年至2021年的上市公司数据与省级数据匹配，进行深入探讨。
间接融资方面，根据生命周期理论和永久性收入假说，当社会中老年人口占比增多时，社会的银行储蓄倾向降低。在存款乘数效应存在的前提下，银行贷款数额也随之减少。而我国的间接融资市场又具有区域性限制，存贷款资源的跨区域流动易受阻碍，只能更多地依赖于本地资金的供求。所以，随着当地老年人口增多，当地的银行储蓄减少，能够为当地发放的贷款总额也减少，公司能够从以银行等金融机构为依托的间接融资市场中获取的资金数额大幅下降。实证结果表明，地区人口老龄化程度与公司总体借款水平和短期借款水平均呈负相关，代表地区人口老龄化对公司间接融资水平确实会产生负向影响。
而直接融资以全国统一大市场为依托，突破了区域化的限制，能够有效地动员和配置全国范围内的资金资源，受到当地老龄化因素的影响不大。此外，必要的融资需求又使得公司在间接融资渠道受阻时主动寻求其他融资方式。所以地区人口老龄化极可能对直接融资产生正向影响。实证结果显示，地区人口老龄化确实加深了IPO融资水平，但是对债券发行和再融资水平无影响。然而，根据优序融资理论，公司寻求外部资金时，会优先选择债务融资而不是股权融资。这样的实证结果显然与优序融资理论不一致。原因在于：债券市场和再融资市场严格的规则制度和最大发行规模限制，使公司产生利用IPO市场融更多资金的无奈之举。
本文从一个全新的视角看待间接和直接融资间的差异，凸显了直接融资举足轻重的地位，也为如何应对人口老龄化提供了独特的思考路径，具有很强的理论与现实意义。无论是公司，还是金融市场，亦或是政府，都应响应国家“提高直接融资比重”的号召，以期更高效地运用直接融资市场，从而应对地区人口老龄化为公司融资乃至整个金融体系带来的风险与挑战。

In recent years, the problem of population age structure in China has become increasingly apparent, and the trend of population aging has become more and more serious. The National Medium and Long Term Plan for Actively Responding to Population Aging points out that Population aging has a far-reaching impact on economic performance, social infrastructure, social culture and ultimately a country's comprehensive strength and global competitiveness. This influence will inevitably affect an important activity of the financial sector-enterprise financing. Therefore, this paper puts forward a perspective from the perspective of enterprise financing: when affected by the regional factors of population aging, how will indirect financing and direct financing of enterprises behave respectively? Is the performance different? In this paper, the data of listed companies and provincial data from 2009 to 2021 are used for in-depth discussion.
As far as indirect financing is concerned, according to the life cycle theory and the assumption of permanent income, when the proportion of middle-aged and elderly people in society increases, the trend of social bank savings will decline. In view of the existence of deposit multiplier, the amount of bank loans has also decreased accordingly. Furthermore, there are regional restrictions in China's indirect financing market, and the cross-regional flow of loan and deposit resources is easily hindered, relying more on the supply and demand of local funds. Therefore, with the increase of the local elderly population, the local bank savings have decreased, and the total amount of loans that can be issued locally has also decreased. Therefore, the amount of funds that enterprises can obtain from the indirect financing market that relies on financial institutions such as banks is greatly reduced. The empirical results show that the aging of the regional population is negatively correlated with the overall borrowing level and short-term borrowing level of the company, which indicates that the aging of the regional population does have a negative impact on the indirect financing level of the company.
However, relying on the national unified market, direct financing has broken through regional restrictions and can effectively mobilize and allocate financial resources nationwide. It is less affected by local aging factors. In addition, when the indirect financing channel is blocked, the necessary financing demand urges the company to actively seek alternative financing methods. Therefore, the aging of regional population is likely to have a positive impact on direct financing. The empirical results show that the aging population in the region has indeed deepened the IPO financing level, but it has no effect on the bond issuance and refinancing level. However, according to financing pecking order theory, when companies seek external funds, they prefer debt financing to equity financing. This empirical result is obviously inconsistent with that of pecking order theory. The reason is that the strict rules and regulations in the bond market and refinancing market and the maximum issuance scale limit force the company to turn to IPO market for financing.
This paper examines the differences between indirect financing and direct financing from a brand-new perspective, emphasizes the key role of direct financing, and provides a unique idea for coping with the challenges brought by population aging. It has strong theoretical and practical significance. Both companies, financial markets and governments should respond to the call of the state to "promote the proportion of direct financing" for using the direct financing market more efficiently, so as to cope with the risks and challenges brought by the aging population in the region to corporate financing and even the entire financial system.