Global Demographic Change: Dimensions and Economic Significance

David Bloom and David Canning ()

No 10817, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Transitions from high mortality and fertility to low mortality and fertility can be beneficial to economies as large baby boom cohorts enter the workforce and save for retirement, while rising longevity has perhaps increased both the incentive to invest in education and to save for retirement. We present estimates of a model of economic growth that highlights the positive effects of demographic change during 1960-95. We also show how Ireland benefited from lower fertility in the form of higher labor supply per capita and how Taiwan benefited through increased savings rates. We emphasize, however, that the realization of the potential benefits associated with the demographic transition appears to be dependent on institutions and policies, requiring the productive employment of the potential workers and savings the transition generates. Economic projections based on an "accounting" approach that assumes constant age-specific behavior are likely to be seriously misleading.

JEL-codes: J11 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
Date: 2004-10
Note: AG LS
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10817.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Working Paper: Global Demographic Change: Dimensions and Economic Significance (2005)
Journal Article: Global demographic change: dimensions and economic significance (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10817

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10817
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().