Ageing and the economy: a literature review of political and policy mechanisms

ABSTRACT Population ageing, and the decline in the working-age population, represent a profound global demographic shift. What political consequences do ageing populations have for the economies of advanced democracies? To address this question, we carry out a wide-ranging, systematic literature review using network-based community detection algorithms and manual coding to select almost 150 articles. We find that research in this area typically focuses on a few mechanisms and is therefore – by design – unable to identify gaps in existing knowledge or assess interactions between different strands of literature. Our review suggests that ageing has important implications for a variety of domains including electoral behaviour, social policy preferences, and public spending. Taken together, the political consequences of population ageing are likely to have previously overlooked and indirect impacts on economic outcomes. Future research should, therefore, examine how population ageing shapes political dynamics and policy choices in ways that also affect the economy.