IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mlb/wpaper/689.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Population Ageing and Projections of Government Social Outlays in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Guest, R.S.
  • McDonald, I.M.

Abstract

This paper makes new projections of government social outlays for Australia. The calculations suggest that government social outlays will increase considerably as a percent of GDP over the next 50 years, by 7.3 percent of GDP in the base case. This is a greater increase than that found by previous investigators. Over 60 percent of this increase will occur between 2011 and 2031, the years when the baby boom generation retires. The major contribution to this increase will have come from increased government outlays on social security. Lower rates of net immigration are shown to yield an even larger increase in the percentage of government social outlays in GDP. The paper also considers the disincentive effect of taxation and the effect of increasing the age of retirement. However, notwithstanding the trends suggested by the projections, the paper argues that there are a number of reasons to be sanguine about the implications of ageing on the share of government outlays in GDP.

Suggested Citation

  • Guest, R.S. & McDonald, I.M., 1999. "Population Ageing and Projections of Government Social Outlays in Australia," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 689, The University of Melbourne.
  • Handle: RePEc:mlb:wpaper:689
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tran, Chung, 2018. "Temptation and taxation with elastic labor," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 351-369.
    2. Bell, William Paul, 2005. "An evaluation of policies to reduce fiscal pressure induced by population ageing in Australia," MPRA Paper 38286, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. O'Brien, Martin, 2004. "Hidden Unemployment and Older Male Workers," Economics Working Papers wp04-02, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    4. Ian M. McDonald, 2017. "‘We Will End Up Being a Third Rate Economy … A Banana Republic’: How Behavioural Economics Can Improve Macroeconomic Outcomes," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 50(2), pages 137-151, June.
    5. repec:acb:cbeeco:2014-616 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Ross Guest, 2013. "Population Ageing and Productivity: Implications and Policy Options for New Zealand," Treasury Working Paper Series 13/21, New Zealand Treasury.
    7. John Janssen, 2002. "Long-term fiscal projections and their relationship with the intertemporal budget constraint: An application to New Zealand," Treasury Working Paper Series 02/05, New Zealand Treasury.
    8. John Creedy & Grant M Scobie, 2002. "Population Ageing and Social Expenditure in New Zealand: Stochastic Projections," Treasury Working Paper Series 02/28, New Zealand Treasury.
    9. Ian M. McDonald, 2016. "The Economics of Ageing: Introduction," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 49(4), pages 471-473, December.
    10. Paul Gerrans & Marilyn Clark‐Murphy & Craig Speelman, 2010. "Asset allocation and age effects in retirement savings choices," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 50(2), pages 301-319, June.
    11. Ross Guest & Ian McDonald, 2001. "National Saving and Population Ageing," Agenda - A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics, vol. 8(3), pages 235-246.
    12. Bruce Chapman & Glenn Withers, 2002. "Human Capital Accumulation: Education and Immigration," CEPR Discussion Papers 452, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    13. Ross S. Ross S. & Ian M. McDonald, 2002. "Would a Decrease in Fertility Be a Threat to Living Standards in Australia?," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 35(1), pages 29-44, March.
    14. Marilyn Clark-Murphy & Craig P. Speelman, 2007. "Decision Making Clusters in Retirement Savings: Preliminary Findings," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 10(2), pages 115-127.
    15. Kudrna, George & Tran, Chung & Woodland, Alan, 2015. "The dynamic fiscal effects of demographic shift: The case of Australia," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 105-122.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    SOCIAL WELFARE ; PUBLIC POLICY ; AGED;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mlb:wpaper:689. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Dandapani Lokanathan (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/demelau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.