Automation and Demographic Change

Demographic Change and Transport

Cultural innovations and demographic change.

Demography plays a large role in cultural evolution through its effects on the effective rate of innovation. If we assume that useful inventions are rare, then small isolated societies will have low rates of invention. In small populations, complex technology will tend to be lost as a result of random loss or incomplete transmission (the Tasmanian effect). Large populations have more inventors ...

Social Implications of Demographic Change

Declining population as well as population aging has substantial impacts on the economy and on the society. By contrast, the size of the population usually does not matter for economic development, if it is stable; Switzerland and Sweden, for example, are rich countries with fewer than 10 million people. However, the process of declining does matter, particularly when it is accompanied by a sig...

Demographic Change, Social Security Systems, and Savings.

In theory, improvements in healthy life expectancy should generate increases in the average age of retirement, with little effect on savings rates. In many countries, however, retirement incentives in social security programs prevent retirement ages from keeping pace with changes in life expectancy, leading to an increased need for life-cycle savings. Analyzing a cross-country panel of macroeco...

Saving and Demographic Change: the Global Dimension

Falling long-term interest rates worldwide have led some policy-makers to speculate on the emergence of a glut of global saving (Bernanke, 2005). The global trend contrasts markedly with that of the United States, where the public discussion has focused on an ongoing decline of private saving and the re-emergence of large budget deficits. The absence of saving in the United States, in conjuncti...