A number of studies argue that aging will profoundly affect China’ s economic growth via technological innovation. From the supply-side or demand-side perspectives, plentiful literature reveal the effect mechanisms of aging on innovation. However, it is uncertainty about the total effect for researchers and there is little elaborate work on the heterogeneity and the time structure of the effect, which are crucial for policy studies related to aging. In this paper, two kinds of patents data respectively provided by the World Bank and OECD are used to classify growth of patents into quantity growth of patents and quality growth of patents. A panel model and a dummy variable model are used to analyze and identify the effect of aging on innovation. The results shows that: 1) Aging has a significant negative effect on the quantity growth of patents applications, but which has a significant positive effect on the quality growth of patents applications; 2) The positive effect of aging on quality patents application exists in different technology fields, but does not show obvious heterogeneity; 3) The positive effect shows an obvious inverted U-shaped feature in time, which exists in different technological fields. This study implies that aging has a positive effect on technological innovation, but with the increase of aging degree, where the negative effect on technological innovation may become more and more obvious. Therefore, relevant policy research should pay more attention to the structural changes of aging effect while focusing on industrial heterogeneity of aging on technological innovation, while emphasizing the positive demand-side effect of aging on technological innovation, more attention should be paid to the possible long-term negative effect of aging on innovation.
