Population Aging, Productivity, and Growth in Living Standards

Abstract

Population aging creates both a problem (higher taxes on a small group of workers to finance higher public pension and health care costs) and automatic adjustments that help to address that problem. The prospect of longer retirement involves an increased incentive to invest in physical capital, and labour scarcity leads to higher pre-tax wages and an increased incentive to invest in human capital. Thus, productivity growth can be favourably affected by aging. The likely empirical magnitude of this beneficial effect is assessed in this paper.productivity; population aging