Population Aging, Labor Mobility, and Economic Growth: Evidence From MENA and the Developed World

This paper examines the economic effects of aging trends using a two-period, two-region OLG model and the population projections for the developed and MENA countries. Migrant workers change the political balance of young and elderly voters in both labor-receiving and labor-sending countries. Numerical simulations show that the MENA region benefits more from international capital mobility. Restricting migration or political participation of migrant workers in the developed region produces inferior growth results for the MENA region. The study reveals that the MENA countries would suffer significantly from lower return to education in terms of growth and consumption.