Secular Stagnation? The Effect of Aging on Economic Growth in the Age of Automation

Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo

No 23077, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Several recent theories emphasize the negative effects of an aging population on economic growth, either because of the lower labor force participation and productivity of older workers or because aging will create an excess of savings over desired investment, leading to secular stagnation. We show that there is no such negative relationship in the data. If anything, countries experiencing more rapid aging have grown more in recent decades. We suggest that this counterintuitive finding might reflect the more rapid adoption of automation technologies in countries undergoing more pronounced demographic changes, and provide evidence and theoretical underpinnings for this argument.

JEL-codes: E30 J11 J24 O33 O47 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-gro and nep-mac
Note: EFG
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (197)

Published as Daron Acemoglu & Pascual Restrepo, 2017. "Secular Stagnation? The Effect of Aging on Economic Growth in the Age of Automation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 174-179, May.

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