Over-aging - Are present human populations too old?

Robert Stelter

VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: This paper investigates the problem of an ``optimum population'' with respect to the age structure. Within a 3-period OLG model, with endogenous fertility and longevity, the optimal age structure, identified by number-dampened total utilitarianism, is generally failed in the laissez-faire economy. The individual decisions on the number of offspring as well as on health expenditures are biased. Tendencies concerning the distortions of the age structures are identified by decentralizing the first-best solution. A calibration of the model for 84 countries emphasizes that mean age in ``Golden Age'' always exceeds the observed, especially due to a very low fertility. Introducing a preference for the population stock increases the number of children. As optimal mean age shrinks, an over-aging of the laissez-faire economy becomes likely. To decentralize the optimal age structure, children are either taxed or subsided, whereas health expenditures are taxed.

JEL-codes: H20 I10 J18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-dge
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/100334/1/VfS_2014_pid_177.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Over-aging - Are present human populations too old? (2015)
Working Paper: Over-aging: Are present human populations too old? (2014)
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:zbw:vfsc14:100334

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().