Ageing and the Economy : a Literature Review of Political and Policy Mechanisms

Population ageing, and the decline in the working-age population, represents a profound and global demographic shift. What political consequences do ageing populations have for the economies of advanced democracies? Research in this area typically focuses on a few mechanisms and is therefore - by design - unable to assess the overall strength of the evidence, or spot gaps in existing knowledge. We carry out a wide-ranging, systematic, literature review using community detection algorithms and manual coding to select 143 articles to review. We find that ageing has important implications for a variety of domains including electoral behaviour, social policy preferences, and public spending. Our review suggests that the political consequences of population aging are likely to have overlooked and indirect impacts on economic outcomes. Future research should address this issue in more detail by examining how population aging shapes political party position and policy choices