Determinants of the Elderly Share of Population: A Cross-Country Empirical Analysis

Jungsuk Kim (), Cynthia Castillejos Petalcorin (), Donghyun Park and Shu Tian ()
Additional contact information
Jungsuk Kim: Sejong University
Cynthia Castillejos Petalcorin: Asian Development Bank
Shu Tian: Asian Development Bank

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2023, vol. 165, issue 3, No 10, 957 pages

Abstract: Abstract COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on the elderly, who are over-represented among those who suffered severe illness or death. The obvious implication is that the share of the elderly in the population significantly affects the impact of COVID-19 on the overall health of a country. More generally, the elderly share has far-reaching economic and social ramifications. In this paper, we perform empirical analysis of cross-country data from 1970 to 2018 to identify the determinants of the share of the elderly—i.e., those aged 65 and over—in a country’s population. We find that the quality of health care, life expectancy, and female labor participation increases the elderly share while higher fertility and female education attainment lower the elderly share. In addition, we find that the share is higher for high income countries and countries in Europe and Central Asia.

Keywords: Population aging; Demographic structure; COVID-19; Public health; Determinants of aging; Elderly (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-022-03052-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:soinre:v:165:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s11205-022-03052-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-022-03052-y

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().