Demographic change and transformations of the active life cycle: what relations?

D. Blanchet and F. Toutlemonde
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D. Blanchet: Insee
F. Toutlemonde: Insee

Documents de Travail de l'Insee - INSEE Working Papers from Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques

Abstract: Historical changes in the typical life-cycle do not conform to a simple model of equal-sharing in which additional years of life are equally distributed between time devoted to training, work and leisure. We have instead observed a quasi-general decline in the share of our life-cycles that is devoted to labour. The major reason for such a deviation is the fact that this life-cycle evolves in response to other factors, such as productivity, preferences and conditions for the accumulation and depreciation of human capital. We investigate the articulation of these different factors in a continuous-time model of life-cycle optimisation that allows a realistic treatment of demographic structure. The main motives for the contraction of working lives are global productivity and the importance of human capital depreciation. We show that the equal-sharing scenario requires a parallel evolution of productivity and consumption norms, and a slowing-down of human capital depreciation that is consistent with the change in life expectancy.

Keywords: Ageing; life-cycle; training; retirement age (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J22 J24 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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