Search Results
The End of Rapid Population Growth
The world’s population had been doubling every 47 years to reach 8 billion today. But it is expected to peak at 10.5 billion before declining by century’s end.
Working Paper
Population aging, labor demand, and the structure of wages
One consequence of demographic change is substantial shifts in the age distribution of the working-age population. As the baby boom generation ages, the usual historical pattern of a high ratio of younger workers relative to older workers has been replaced by a pattern of roughly equal percentages of workers of different ages.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 lower the wage premium paid for older, more experienced workers. This paper provides strong empirical support for this hypothesis. Econometric estimates imply that the size of one?s birth cohort ...
Report
Population aging, migration spillovers, and the decline in interstate migration
We investigate the role of the aging of the U.S. population in the decline in interstate migration since the mid-1980s. Using an instrumental variables strategy on cross-state data, we show that an aging workforce causes the migration rates of all age groups in a state to drop. This demonstrates that the effect of aging on migration includes indirect effects that go beyond the direct effect of raising the workforce share of groups with lower migration rates. We then develop an island model in which firms can hire workers either locally or from other locations, and show that an aging ...
Journal Article
Can Population Aging Explain Rising Healthcare Spending Across Countries?
A low-income country spends about 5.3% of its output on healthcare, while a higher-income country spends closer to 7.5% of its output on healthcare.