Večina ljudi se ne zaveda, da staranje prebivalstva – kot posledica nižje stopnje rodnosti od stopnje umrljivosti – vodi v upadanje stopnje gospodarske rasti (seveda pa tudi v pospešeno rast izdatkov, povezanih s staranjem – za pokojnine, zdravstvo in dolgotrajno oskrbo). Stopnja rasti BDP je namreč po definiciji enaka vsoti stopnje rasti prebivalstva in stopnje rasti produktivnosti (BDP per capita). Spodaj je nekaj odlomkov iz zadnje empirične analize (za 145 držav), za koliko bi negativna demografija lahko znižala stopnjo gospodarske rasti. Analiza kaže, da če bi povprečna stopnja rasti BDP v obdobju 2020-2050 brez učinkov staranja znašala 2.5% letno, bi staranje prebivalstva to stopnjo rasti BDP v povprečju znižalo za 0.8 odstotnih točk. Ta negativni učinek bi lahko bil nižji (“le” 0.4 odstotnih točk), če bi upoštevali učinke “funkcionalne kapacitete” starostne strukture. Po domače rečeno, če bi vzporedno s staranjem prebivalstva tudi podaljševali delovno dobo oziroma skrajševali upokojitveno obdobje, bi lahko nekoliko omilili negativni učinek staranja prebivalstva.

Naj povem še drugače, ker smo z rastjo razvitosti izgubili željo po razmnoževanju (in po vsaj enostavni reprodukciji prebivalstva, to je najmanj 2.1 otroka v povprečju na žensko), bomo to morali plačati z nižjo gospodarsko rastjo. To pa lahko nekoliko omilimo s tem, da delamo dlje. Iz tega sledi logično vprašanje za mlajše generacije v reproduktivni dobi:

vam je ljubše roditi več otrok ali delati bistveno dlje (in manj časa uživati pokojnino)?

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This paper examines the extent to which changes in working-age shares associated withpopulation aging might slow economic growth in upcoming years. We first analyze the economiceffects of changing working-age shares in a standard empirical growth model using country paneldata from 1950–2015. We then juxtapose the estimates with predicted shifts in population agestructure to project economic growth in 2020–2050. Our results indicate that population agingwill slow economic growth throughout much of the world. Expansions of labor supply due toimprovements in functional capacity among older people can cushion much of this demographicdrag.

Population growth and age structure change dramatically as countries transition from high to lowrates of mortality and fertility. These changes present an opportunity for societies to substantiallyraise living standards. Initially, mortality declines faster than fertility, producing a bulge of youngdependents that tends to depress economic growth. However, once fertility decline acceleratesand this bulge of young people progresses into working ages, economic growth can take off. Thegrowing ratio of working-age people in the total population raises labor input; promotes productivity;and frees resources for saving, educational attainment, and innovation.

Bloom et al. (2003) label this growth take-off the demographic dividend. Countries harness itif they create a socioeconomic environment that beneficially employs their labor potential. Thedividend dissipates once countries complete the demographic transition. However, as fertilityremains below long-run replacement rates in many countries and large cohorts progress to olderages, population age structures fail to stabilize in the foreseeable future. This threatens to turn thedemographic dividend into a demographic drag. How these powerful and unprecedented populationdynamics will affect economic growth remains unclear.

In this paper, we investigate the likely consequences of contracting working-age shares—theproportion of the population that is of working age—for growth of income per capita in subsequentyears. To this end, we examine the economic effects of population age structure through the lens of astandard empirical growth model that incorporates population age structure. Within this framework,we test implicit assumptions underlying research on the demographic dividend and shed light onhow informative this abstraction is for past and future implications of population aging.

An important novelty of our approach is the distinction among different conceptualizations ofpopulation age structure. Conventional measures of age structure define working ages retrospectivelybased on years lived since birth (that is, based on chronological age). They classify entry into oldage at the same age for different generations. However, this classification ignores changes in agepatterns of health resulting from reductions in mortality and disability and thus misses heterogeneityin people’s age-specific functional capacities across countries and over time (Fries 1980; Frieset al. 2011; Cutler et al. 2006, 2014). Here we contrast this retrospective perspective with a newprospective (or functional) concept of working ages developed by Sanderson and Scherbov (2005,2007, 2010, 2019). They define entry into old age with a variable age threshold that dependson expected years of life ahead and that correlates, as we will show, with functional capacityin terms of mortality, disability, body strength, and cognitive capacity at the macro level. Bycharacterizing labor potential under fixed and evolving functional capacities, retrospective andprospective measures indicate bounds for how shrinking working-age shares might affect economicgrowth in the years ahead.

Based on this distinction, we answer two research questions. Will foreseeable changes in theworking-age share slow economic growth? And to what extent does the effect depend on variationin functional capacities as captured by a prospective concept of working ages?

The analysis proceeds in two steps. In the first step, we develop an empirical growth modelthat uses an accounting identity to describe the effects of population age structure on economicgrowth, which we then fit to country panel data from 1950–2015. In the second step, we combinethe estimated parameters with demographic predictions to estimate the implications of populationaging for projected growth of income per capita in 2020–2050. Our projections contrast scenariosfor retrospective and prospective measures of working-age shares with a counterfactual scenario inwhich population age structure is fixed. Quantitative differences among these scenarios indicate arange for the effect of changes in working-age shares on the pace of economic growth; moreover,they allow us to gauge the extent to which expansions in labor supply associated with improvementsin functional capacity can counteract this effect.We fit our empirical model for 145 countries observed in five-year intervals throughout 1950–2015.

The model successfully reproduces patterns of economic growth observed in the data. Ourestimates match parameter restrictions on the economic effects of population age structure, conformwith stylized facts of the growth literature, and closely replicate per capita income levels in withinsampleprojections. Specifically, the results document that shifts in population age structuresignificantly affect economic growth. A 1 percent increase in the working-age share (0.5 percentagepoints on average) raises income per capita by about 1 percent. In addition, a 1 percent greaterworking-age share amplifies growth by 0.1–0.4 percent in subsequent periods. These patternsare stable across specifications and over time and obtain for both Organisation of Economic Cooperationand Development (OECD) and non-OECD countries.

We combine the empirical estimates with demographic predictions and project economic growthin 2020–2050. These projections show that future growth depends not only on how populationage structures change as cohorts pass through the age distribution but also on how labor potentialchanges with improvements in functional capacity as longevity rises. Contractions in working-ageshares will slow growth; however, gains in functional capacity thanks to higher life expectancy cancushion perhaps half of this slowdown. Without population aging, income per capita in OECDcountries is projected to grow on average by 2.5 percent annually between 2020 and 2050. Withpopulation aging, growth is projected to slow by 0.8 percentage points if we measure working agesretrospectively but only by 0.4 percentage points if we measure working ages prospectively. Thesevalues define bounds for the average demographic drag across OECD countries with and withoutthe potential gains from expansions in labor supply due to improved functional capacities. Whetheror not these gains can be realized depends on labor markets and institutions. In contrast, populationaging is projected to spur average growth of income per capita in non-OECD countries. When wefocus on the country level, we find pronounced differences in growth that depend on heterogeneityin the pace and scale of demographic change.

The results offer novel insights into the economic ramifications of population aging in laterstages of the demographic transition. Previous work documents that a falling youth share in thepopulation creates the opportunity for a demographic dividend (Bloom and Freeman 1988; BloomandWilliamson 1998; Bloom and Canning 2000, 2008; Bloom et al. 2003; Mason 2007; Bloom et al.2009). However, the implications of a rising old-age population are still debated. This debate rangesfrom pessimistic predictions about inflationary pressure and economic stagnation due to shrinkingpopulations (Goodhart and Pradhan 2020; Jones 2022) to modest negative effects of populationaging on living standards (for example, National Research Council 2012, in the context of theUnited States of America). Some contributions even argue that capital deepening and automationmay (at least temporarily) promote growth (Cutler et al. 1990; Acemoglu and Restrepo 2017).

Recent evidence finds negative economic effects of population aging in simulations or samplesthat are restricted to few countries, often the United States (Sheiner 2014; Cooley and Henriksen2018; Aksoy et al. 2019; Gagnon et al. 2021; Maestas et al. 2023). Here we examine the economiceffects of population aging globally, using a framework that encompasses previous models designedto analyze the demographic dividend (Kelley and Schmidt 2005; Crespo Cuaresma et al. 2014; Lutzet al. 2019; Kotschy et al. 2020). In doing so, we contribute a new stylized fact to this literatureby demonstrating that a demographic drag will be the norm as countries advance through thelater stages of the demographic transition. The results document that population aging will sloweconomic growth in 70 countries of our sample—virtually all those whose working-age sharescontract in the near future.

Our findings for prospective aging also add a new perspective on the quantitative importance ofpopulation aging for economic growth. For example, Maestas et al. (2023) predict 0.6 percentagepoints lower income per capita growth in 2020–2030 using variation in the (retrospective) populationshare age 60 and older across U.S. states (Aksoy et al. 2019 report a comparable estimate basedon vector autoregression for a subsample of OECD countries). Our projections predict a similarslowdown of 0.54 percentage points in this period for retrospective aging (upper bound) but onlya 0.26 percentage point reduction for prospective aging (lower bound). Hence, the economicconsequences of population aging will likely be less severe than retrospective measures of agingsuggest. The consideration of both retrospective and prospective aging will become ever morecrucial for economic analyses as people live longer and healthier lives (Lutz et al. 2008).

Finally, the evidence highlights that, over and above improved welfare, there are sizable economicgains due to increased population health and longevity. In developed countries, life expectancyand functional capacity improve predominantly in adulthood and especially after 65 (Eggleston andFuchs 2012). These improvements shape how people learn, work, and save over the life courseand thus promote income growth and wellbeing (Bloom et al. 2007; Cervellati and Sunde 2013;S´anchez-Romero et al. 2016; Hansen and Strulik 2017; Kotschy 2021; Scott 2021a,b,c; Dalgaardet al. 2022a). Our results demonstrate that gains in age-specific functional capacities thanks tochanging age patterns of health can help counteract negative consequences of population agingfor growth by enabling people to expand economic activity into older ages. The projections forretrospective and prospective aging constitute bounding cases that identify the economic gainsassociated with such expansions. Whereas retrospective working-age shares describe the case inwhich economic activity stays constant, prospective working-age shares describe the case in whicheconomic activity expands with longevity. Whether countries can harness these gains will dependon people’s preferences for retirement and the extent to which labor markets and health and socialpolicy facilitate retaining workers productively in the workforce.

Vir: Rainer Kotschy and David E. Bloom, Population Aging and Economic Growth: From Demographic Dividend to Demographic Drag?, NBER 2023