Keeping public finances on a sustainable foundation while the population ages is clearly a problem in Finland, as in many other western countries. The shrinking of the working-age population, ageing of the labour force, and growth in the number of very old persons form a difficult combination...

The first of May 2004 marked an important date in the history of Europe as a political, geographic, and social entity. After years of negotiations, ten European countries joined the European Union, bringing in their potential and expectations, adding a total population of 75 million people and a...

The current optimum population models found in economic literature define static optimum population used in forming policy i.e. at a given instant what should be the optimum number of people in a (closed) economy. We believe that although this definition is useful, it is very limiting as far as...

This paper presents the methodology and results of labour force projections over the long term (until 2050) for each of the 25 EU Member States. These projections were undertaken in order to provide the background technical inputs for the assessment of the potential economic and fiscal impact of...

This paper examines the relationship between fertility and human capital investment, and it’s implications for economic growth, focusing on the e ects of declining mortality. Unlike the existing literature, this paper stresses the role of uncertainty about the number of surviving children. If...

We examine the role of changing mortality in explaining the rise of retirement over the course of the 20th century. We construct a model in which individuals make labor/leisure choices over their lifetimes subject to uncertainty about their date of death. In an environment in which mortality is...

Views of the future China vary widely. While some believe that the collapse of China is inevitable, others see the emergence of a new superpower that increasingly poses a threat to the U.S. This paper examines the economic growth prospects of China over the next two decades. Extrapolating past...

This chapter examines the process of development from an epoch of Malthusian stagnation to a state of sustained economic growth. The analysis focuses on recently advanced unified growth theories that capture the intricate evolution of income per capita, technology, and population over the course...

The median age of the global population is presently increasing by nearly three months every year. Over the next couple of decades, almost every country in the world is set to experience an unprecedented increase in the share of elderly population. This development has the potential to...

This paper describes the model MARS, which is the shared property of the DP and the DSS. Currently, MARS aims at planning the general evolution of the first pillar pension scheme for private sector wage-earners, based on macroeconomic and demographic data. It allows to evaluate the impact of...