Journal of the Economics of Ageing最新文献

Israel’s rapidly growing population comprises three major groups: Israeli Arabs; Haredim, also known as ultraorthodox Jews; and the general population, mainly composed of secular and religious Jews. Each of these has a different demographic and socioeconomic profile, including very different age structures and anticipated growth patterns. Here, we disaggregate Israel’s 2018 national NTA schedule for each of the three subpopulations. We show that as of 2018, collected tax income fell short of public expenditures by 4.9% in the general population, 56.2% in the Arab population, and 66.1% in the Haredi population. The Haredi population was almost fully reliant on public transfers to make up this difference. The low fiscal support ratios (FSRs) in Israel’s Arab and Haredi populations are a direct result of their low employment levels and low-quality employment. We forecast the fiscal consequences of two type of compositional shifts within Israel’s population up to 2050: aging and a rapid increase in the share of Haredi Jews at all ages. These forecasts point to a 12% reduction in Israel’s national fiscal support ratio by 2050, with two-thirds of this caused by aging, and the remainder by the increasing share of Haredim.

Population aging increases dependency levels and can influence the transition from working life to retirement. Changes in population structure have important economic effects, which can be positive when analyzing the impacts of a more educated older labor force but could also impact families and governments. It is important to consider how age and education composition are associated with each other in contexts marked by high levels of inequality. In this paper, we analyze the economic consequences of the aging process in Brazil considering the role of improvements in education and the possibility of the constitution of a silver dividend in the country. We use a series of simulation models, based on the determinants of labor supply and labor income of people aged 45 years and over, to investigate the impacts of changes in the educational composition of the labor force. Our simulations show that the positive association between education, labor supply, and labor income would be more pronounced in scenarios of higher levels of education, labor market stability (high status activities and informality reduction), and changes in retirement rules, specifically the establishment of minimum ages. Such a context would increase the number of older workers and improve productivity, allowing appropriate conditions for the development of a silver dividend in Brazil in a quantitative and a qualitative way.

Prior research on inequality in Mexico has largely centered on income, education, and job status, overlooking the compound impact on gender and generational disparities. This oversight limits our understanding of social mobility dynamics and prospects. This study contributes to this body of research by analyzing labor income and consumption inequalities between 1994 and 2014, incorporating unpaid care and household production from 2014, using National Transfer Accounts frameworks. The study reveals five main findings. First, an increase in the number of households with secondary education might not be enough to significantly reduce inequality, as the proportion of households with tertiary education remained unchanged between 1994 and 2014. Second, progress in reducing labor income and consumption inequality among educational groups stagnated or reversed by 2014. Third, substantial differences exist in labor income and consumption across socioeconomic groups, with men consistently earning more than women. Fourth, unpaid household production varies across educational groups, with women in the most educated group dedicating the least time to these activities, while men in this group contribute more than other groups. Lastly, unpaid care and household production plays a significant role for women, and if they were compensated, it could considerably equalize labor income across genders and socioeconomic groups. This paper emphasizes the critical role of education and the equitable valuation of paid and unpaid work in reducing economic disparities in Mexico across genders and throughout the economic life cycle. To address disparities, the study stresses the importance of expanding education and aligning labor markets accordingly.

The present study uses estimations of the National Accounts system by age and socioeconomic status to analyze inequalities in human capital investment in children. Socioeconomic status is proxied by the household head's education; children are the population under age 21; human capital comprises education and health consumption of National Accounts. The estimates suggest that funding human capital requires the re-assignation of resources between ages and socioeconomic groups and makes evident the central role of government interventions in redistribution. Nevertheless, differences in investment are relevant primarily because of investments funded with private resources. Estimates suggest that the improvement in socioeconomic level has different effects on the destination of resources allocated to children according to the starting level: first, consumption increases, then investment in education, and finally, investment in health.

South Africa’s demographic dividend is waning, with the vast majority of the positive impact of the dividend estimated to lie in the past. This paper considers improvements in education across the population and the potential impact of such improvements on the demographic dividend using the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodology and three sub-groups of the population defined according to educational attainment. The data suggests that simply accounting for rising educational attainment leads to a larger estimate of the demographic dividend, and that the effect of education is sufficiently strong to outweigh the negative effect of population ageing on the demographic dividend over the next five to six decades. More rapid improvements in educational attainment are estimated to yield a stronger demographic dividend, although the dividend period is slightly shortened.

This study uses an original dataset of online mid-career job ads for full-time sales jobs collected from July 2018 to December 2019 to examine the use of explicit and implied age limits on job applicants and the characteristics of firms that set them. Although Japanese law prohibits age discrimination in employment, several exemptions, such as hiring young workers without prior work experience on regular contracts, are allowed. Firms can set an age limit, require job-related experience, or search broadly; however, they can also express their age preference in other ways. In the sample, 24 % of ads included explicit age limits generally capped at 35 years, 26 % set experience requirements, and nearly all contained some form of implied age preference. Consistent with theoretical predictions, the results show that firms with higher capital, those with fewer employees, older firms and those located in urban centers tended to set requirements on applicants. Further, domestic firms, firms with fewer employees, in urban centers and firms using probation periods for new hires were more likely to set age limits. Moreover, firms setting either requirement did not seem to be sensitive to local labor market conditions. Firms searching broadly responded to population age-related increased wage expectations while reducing labor costs by increasing the number of working hours covered by a baseline wage.

Europe is experiencing the challenges of aging. However, different evolutions of their dependency ratios are observed, stimulated in many cases by the baby boom generation entering retirement ages. Simultaneously, a huge educational expansion also started in the second half of the 20th century, but at different speeds and levels. Education has been pointed out as a possible solution to offset the impact of aging on the sustainability of the welfare state, but, is this true for all European countries? Have all of them taken advantage of previous lower demographic dependency ratios? In this paper, we try to answer these questions by estimating the change in demographic dependency from an economic perspective considering the implications of a changing educational composition. We combine economic profiles of production and consumption by age and educational level (obtained using the National Transfer Accounts methodology) and population projections by level of education to estimate the Economic Support Ratio (ESR) growth rates from 1950 to 2080 for 19 European countries. Results show that the positive ESR since 1970 for a majority of countries is, in most cases, driven by an universal educational expansion, as the expected positive effect of the post-war baby boom is not observed in all countries. Around 2010–15, the ESR growth turns negative in many countries, as population aging cannot be offset anymore by on-going educational increases. In the future, the age effect will be the main driver of the ESR evolution due to the strong aging process, and an educational expansion almost fulfilled.

Singapore had experienced rapid GDP growth from the period of 1970-2020. This work is adds to the overall contribution in studies understanding the contribution of age and education effects in the demographic dividend for countries, in this case – for a small, rapidly-developing country in Asia that had achieved high-income status. Following Rentería et. al. (2016), we use the Das Gupta decomposition technique to decompose Singapore’s demographic dividend to the respective age effect and education effect. We do this, having derived labour income and consumption profiles by age and education attainment, using National Transfer Account (NTA) methodology. We find that for Singapore the education effect was larger than the age effect for the entire period, driven by the education effect on labour income. These findings are comparable to Rentería et. al. (2016) for Mexico and Spain where the education effect were also larger than the age effect. Understanding the contributions of age and education effects on the economic support ratio will have policy implications as Singapore continues to age rapidly. This work also adds to the perspective on the importance of building up human capital in sustaining the demographic dividend.

The paper analyses the role of educational level in unpaid household work by breaking down the age profiles of production and transfers by three educational levels: low, medium, and high. The age profiles of the production and transfers of unpaid household work are presented for eight EU countries: Austria, Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain. Results show that time spent on housework peaks around the retirement age. At this point, individuals retire and have more time available for housework. However, the educational level does not have a large impact on men’s housework production levels, but it has it on the levels of women’s housework production. The results further show that highly educated women tend to spend the least time on housework production over the life cycle. On the other hand, men and women with high levels of education spend the most time on childcare, while both men and women with low levels of education spend the least on it: about two and a half times less time than the highly educated. Women are still the main providers of childcare and also the main transfer givers of unpaid household work over the life cycle. On the other hand, men of all educational levels are transfer recipients for most of the life cycle. However, highly educated men give highest transfers during their working ages in most of the countries analysed, while highly educated women transfer slightly less of unpaid household work than women of other educational levels.

Latin America is the least egalitarian region in the world. A neo-socialist government in Ecuador prioritized the reduction of socioeconomic status (SES) inequalities. The generational economy is a framework to understand the economic lifecycle and to link demographic change with people's well-being. This article aims to uncover SES-driven inequalities in the generational economy of Ecuador: did public transfers modify them from 2006 to 2011? National transfer accounts (NTA) were disaggregated by SES quartiles, which were defined by the highest level of education attainment in each household. The accounts within SES quartiles were estimated using standard NTA methods. A pseudo-Gini coefficient summarized SES-driven inequalities by age and generational account. This secondary analysis was based on existing micro databases from the Ecuadorian NTA.

Results

National averages do not represent well the generational economy of the low-SES population. The usual gradient of higher economic figures in higher SES strata shows up in almost all NTAs with the notable exceptions of reversal (progressive) gradients in conditional public cash transfers to low-SES households and public education at the elementary school level. Retirement pensions are extremely regressive public transfers, benefiting mostly high-SES strata.

Conclusions

Population aging might worsen the high levels of inequality already existing in Ecuador and Latin America. Some progressive public policies worked well to reduce inequality in Ecuador.

Contribution

This article demonstrates the importance of uncovering SES-driven inequalities existing in NTAs and their change through the lifecycle. It also identifies public policies that ameliorated inequality as well as public transfers that are regressive.