Contribution of demography to economic growth

Miguel Sánchez-Romero, Gemma Abio, Concepció Patxot and Guadalupe Souto ()
Additional contact information
Guadalupe Souto: Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB)

SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, No 2, 27-64

Abstract: Abstract From 1850 to 2000, in Western European countries life expectancy rose from 30–40 to 80 years and the average number of children per woman fell from 4 to 5 children to slightly more than one. To gauge the economic consequences of these demographic trends, we implement an overlapping generations model with heterogeneity by level of education in which individuals optimally decide their consumption of market- and home-produced goods as well as the time spent on paid and unpaid work. We find that around 17 $$\%$$ % of the observed increase in per-capita income growth from 1850 to 2000 was due to the demographic transition. Around 50 $$\%$$ % of the demographic contribution is explained by the increase in the average productivity per worker (productivity component), which arises from the change in the population’s age structure and the rise in households’ saving rate. The remaining 50 $$\%$$ % is explained by the higher growth rate of workers relative to the total population (translation component).

Keywords: Demographic dividend; Fertility; Mortality; Per-capita income growth; Overlapping generations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D58 E27 J11 N30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13209-017-0164-y Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:series:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s13209-017-0164-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/13209

DOI: 10.1007/s13209-017-0164-y

Access Statistics for this article

SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association is currently edited by Nezih Guner

More articles in SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association from Springer, Spanish Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().