Technology, Tradition, and Treatment of the Elderly

Matthew Baker and Joyce Jacobsen ()

No 452, Economics Working Paper Archive at Hunter College from Hunter College Department of Economics

Abstract: We discuss the interrelationship between treatment of the elderly, production technology, technological progress, and transmission of culture using a model in which respect for the elderly is endogenous. We focus our analysis on the relative well-being of the elderly, and employ the model to explain cross-societal patterns in the relative well-being of the elderly, encompassing hunter-gatherer, subsistence agriculture, and modern, fully-developed societies. One result is that the cultivation of culture and norms for respect for the elderly bears a nonlinear relationship with the level of development and other fundamental features of the economy, such as the degree to which property rights are defined. We discuss how the elderly might be impacted by modern demographic, technological, and policy changes in both developing and developed economies.

Keywords: Elderly Treatment; Social Security; Gift-Giving; Inter Vivos Transfers; Economic Growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 D14 D15 J11 J14 O41 O42 O43 P51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-evo and nep-gro
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:htr:hcecon:452

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