The End of Economic Growth? Unintended Consequences of a Declining Population

Charles Jones

American Economic Review, 2022, vol. 112, issue 11, 3489-3527

Abstract: In many models, economic growth is driven by people discovering new ideas. These models typically assume either a constant or growing population. However, in high income countries today, fertility is already below its replacement rate: women are having fewer than two children on average. It is a distinct possibility that global population will decline rather than stabilize in the long run. In standard models, this has profound implications: rather than continued exponential growth, living standards stagnate for a population that vanishes. Moreover, even the optimal allocation can get trapped in this outcome if there are delays in implementing optimal policy.

JEL-codes: I12 J11 J13 O41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20201605 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E176683V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20201605.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The End of Economic Growth? Unintended Consequences of a Declining Population (2020)
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:aea:aecrev:v:112:y:2022:i:11:p:3489-3527

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/aer.20201605

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().