Population-ageing, structural change and productivity growth

Abstract

Population-ageing is one of the traditional topics of development and growth theory and a key challenge to most modern societies. We focus on the following aspect: Population-ageing is associated with changes in demand-structure, since demand-patterns change with increasing age. This process induces structural changes (factor-reallocations across technologically heterogeneous sectors) and, thus, has impacts on average productivity growth. We provide a neoclassical multi-sector growth-model for analyzing these aspects and elaborate potential policy-impact channels. We show that ageing has permanent and complex/multifaceted impacts on the growth rate of the economy and could, therefore, be an important determinant of long-run GDP-growth.population-ageing; demand shifts; reallocation of factors; cross-sector technology-disparity; GDP-growth; multi-sector growth models; neoclassical growth models; structural change