Macroeconomic implications of population aging: Evidence from Japan

Population aging is an important feature of Japan’s economy, which since 2006 has become a super-aged society. Changes in the age distribution of the population have important macroeconomic implications. Using annual data for 1960–2015, this study tests whether population age shares have long run influences on domestic saving, domestic investment, real GDP, inflation, the fiscal balance, and the current account balance. Cointegration is found between each macroeconomic variable and the demographic variables, which is a key finding of the analysis. The main empirical findings from the long-run cointegrating equations are that the effects of demographic change on the macroeconomic variables are statistically significant and quite strong. Alternative variants of the United Nation’s population projections provide further evidence of the importance of the demographic changes for Japan’s macroeconomic future. This study finds that future trends of key macroeconomic variables are not monotonic, but rather that long swings in the demographic factors produce a mixture of moderate growth periods and episodes of GDP stagnation.