Spatial Persistence of Demographic Shocks and Economic Growth

This paper studies how the spatial effects of demographic system affects economic growth of different countries. Population growth shocks (whether in aggregate or in disaggregate form) in general have spatial movement that is deemed to contribute to economic growth fluctuations depending upon their convergence properties to the long-run level. By constructing a ‘demographic distance’ function based on both average age-shares and their stochastic time series characteristics, we show that persistence of spatial demographic system has had discernible effects on economic growth of Asia, Europe, Africa, and Latin America and Offshore countries in the last four decades. While the temporal study of demographic system on economic growth fluctuations is getting popularity, this paper goes a step further to explain persistence properties of economic growth by embedding temporal features by studying a spatial VAR model of demography and economic growth.