Relative Wages in Aging America: The Baby Boomer Effect

Teresa Ghilarducci, Michael Papadopoulos and Siavash Radpour

No 2017-03, SCEPA working paper series. from Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School

Abstract: As Baby Boomers remain in the work force, some due to inadequate retirement savings, the labor supply of older workers (ages 55 to 74 years old) could increase relative to the labor supply of prime-age and younger workers. Economic theory suggests an increase in the relative labor supply of older Americans could lower wages or slow wage growth for younger workers if older workers are used extensively as their substitutes rather than complements.The authors estimate the degree of complementarities between workers grouped by age and sex. The results imply that policies aimed to encourage older people to stay and enter the labor market, such as increasing Social Security's full retirement age or raising Medicare eligibility to age 70, may have broad labor market effects by causing wage stagnation.

Keywords: Planning; Transaction Matrix; Post-Keynesian; Monetary (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J2 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-lma
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:epa:cepawp:2017-07

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