Population Aging And The Structure Of Wages

Robert Triest, Steven Sass () and Margarita Sapozhnikov ()

Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College from Center for Retirement Research

Abstract: The United States, along with virtually all other developed countries, is on the cusp of a radical transformation of its labor markets. One consequence of demographic change is that there have been substantial shifts in the age distribution of the working age population. The usual historical pattern of a high ratio of younger workers relative to older workers is being replaced by a pattern of roughly equal percentages of workers of different ages. One might expect that the increasing relative supply of older workers would decrease the wage premium paid for older, and more experienced, workers. This paper provides strong empirical support for this hypothesis. Econometric estimates imply that the size of one’s birth cohort affects wages throughout one’s working life, with members of relatively large cohorts earning a significantly lower wage than members of smaller cohorts at all stages of their careers. Our results suggest that cohort size effects are quantitatively important, and should be incorporated into public policy analyses.

Date: 2006-11-15
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://crr.bc.edu/working-papers/population-aging- ... -structure-of-wages/
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden (http://crr.bc.edu/working-papers/population-aging-labor-demand-and-the-structure-of-wages/ [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://crr.bc.edu/working-papers/population-aging-labor-demand-and-the-structure-of-wages/)

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:crr:crrwps:wp2006-5

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College from Center for Retirement Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Amy Grzybowski () and Christopher F Baum ().