IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed009/778.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Who's afraid of population aging?

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander Ueberfeldt

    (Bank of Canada)

Abstract

Most industrialized countries confront at the same time an increasing life-span, low current birth rates and the retirement of the relatively large post World War II generation. This paper considers different policies as potential solutions to the implied funding problem of any Pay-As-You-Go retirement system. The policies are: increasing social security taxes, decreasing retirement-benefits, increasing eligibility age for retirement benefits, and a privatization of the retirement system using debt to finance the transition. It asks the question: What are the welfare and macroeconomic consequences of different retirement policies in the presence of population aging? The question is answered in a general equilibrium lifecycle model with endogenous savings, labor supply and human capital accumulation, calibrated to match important characteristics of the U.S. economy. The paper finds that privatization is the only Pareto improving policy in the considered set. Furthermore, the presence of human capital accumulation has important policy implications, making the transition to a privatized system longer and more difficult to finance.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Ueberfeldt, 2009. "Who's afraid of population aging?," 2009 Meeting Papers 778, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed009:778
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2009/paper_778.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Krueger, Dirk & Ludwig, Alexander, 2007. "On the consequences of demographic change for rates of returns to capital, and the distribution of wealth and welfare," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 49-87, January.
    2. Edward C. Prescott, 2004. "Why do Americans work so much more than Europeans?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 28(Jul), pages 2-13.
    3. Dirk Krueger & Alexander Ludwig, 2006. "On the Consequences of Demographic Change for International Capital Flows, Rates of Returns to Capital, and the Distribution of Wealth and Welfare," 2006 Meeting Papers 643, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Juan Carlos Conesa & Sagiri Kitao & Dirk Krueger, 2009. "Taxing Capital? Not a Bad Idea after All!," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 25-48, March.
    5. Alexander Ludwig & Thomas Schelkle & Edgar Vogel, 2007. "Demographic Change, Human Capital and Endogenous Growth," MEA discussion paper series 07151, Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy.
    6. Erosa, Andres & Fuster, Luisa & Restuccia, Diego, 2016. "A quantitative theory of the gender gap in wages," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 165-187.
    7. Kotlikoff, Laurence J. & Smetters, Kent & Walliser, Jan, 2007. "Mitigating America's demographic dilemma by pre-funding social security," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 247-266, March.
    8. Ludwig, Alexander, 2007. "The Gauss-Seidel-quasi-Newton method: A hybrid algorithm for solving dynamic economic models," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 1610-1632, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Ellen R. McGrattan & Edward C. Prescott, 2017. "On financing retirement with an aging population," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 8(1), pages 75-115, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Heer, Burkhard & Polito, Vito & Wickens, Michael R., 2020. "Population aging, social security and fiscal limits," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    2. Geri, Milva, 2022. "Pension arrangements and economic thinking: unreal assumptions and false predictions in the case of Argentina," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), April.
    3. Alexander Ludwig & Michael Reiter, 2010. "Sharing Demographic Risk--Who Is Afraid of the Baby Bust?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 83-118, November.
    4. Vogel, Edgar & Ludwig, Alexander & Börsch-Supan, Axel, 2017. "Aging and pension reform: extending the retirement age and human capital formation," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(1), pages 81-107, January.
    5. Woodland, A., 2016. "Taxation, Pensions, and Demographic Change," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 713-780, Elsevier.
    6. Nezih Guner & Remzi Kaygusuz & Gustavo Ventura, 2012. "Taxation and Household Labour Supply," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(3), pages 1113-1149.
    7. Kwon, Kyooho, 2019. "Equity across Generations and Uncertainty within a Generation: A Welfare Analysis of the National Pension System," KDI Journal of Economic Policy, Korea Development Institute (KDI), vol. 41(2), pages 1-39.
    8. Hans A. Holter & Dirk Krueger & Serhiy Stepanchuk, 2019. "How do tax progressivity and household heterogeneity affect Laffer curves?," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 10(4), pages 1317-1356, November.
    9. Andrés Erosa & Luisa Fuster & Gueorgui Kambourov, 2016. "Towards a Micro-Founded Theory of Aggregate Labour Supply," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(3), pages 1001-1039.
    10. Kallweit, Manuel & Kohlmeier, Anabell, 2012. "Zusatzbeiträge in der Gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung: Weiterentwicklungsoptionen und ihre finanziellen sowie allokativen Effekte," Working Papers 06/2012, German Council of Economic Experts / Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung.
    11. Jiang Wei, 2019. "Optimal taxation under equilibrium unemployment and economic profits," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 19(1), pages 1-21, January.
    12. Long Xin & Pelloni Alessandra, 2011. "Welfare improving taxation on savings in a growth model," wp.comunite 0091, Department of Communication, University of Teramo.
    13. Lopez-Daneri, Martin, 2016. "NIT picking: The macroeconomic effects of a Negative Income Tax," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 1-16.
    14. Markus Poschke & Baris Kaymak & Ozan Bakis, 2012. "On the Optimality of Progressive Income Redistribution," 2012 Meeting Papers 837, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    15. Nishiyama, Shinichi, 2015. "Fiscal policy effects in a heterogeneous-agent OLG economy with an aging population," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 114-132.
    16. Reona Hagiwara, 2022. "Welfare Effects of Health Insurance Reform: The Role of Elastic Medical Demand," IMES Discussion Paper Series 22-E-05, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    17. Ludwig, Alexander & Schelkle, Thomas & Vogel, Edgar, 2007. "Demographic change, human capital and endogenous growth," Papers 08-43, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    18. Börsch-Supan, Axel & Härtl, Klaus & Leite, Duarte Nuno & Ludwig, Alexander, 2018. "Endogenous Retirement Behavior of Heterogeneous Households Under Pension Reforms," MEA discussion paper series 201804, Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy.
    19. Kumhof, Michael & Tideman, Nicolaus & Hudson, Michael & Goodhart, Charles, 2021. "Post-Corona Balanced-Budget Super-Stimulus: The Case for Shifting Taxes onto Land," CEPR Discussion Papers 16652, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Yamada, Tomoaki, 2012. "Income risk, macroeconomic and demographic change, and economic inequality in Japan," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 63-84.

    More about this item

    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:red:sed009:778. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.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.