This paper examines the extent to which changes in working-age shares associated with population aging might slow economic growth in upcoming years. We first analyze the economic effects of changing working-age shares in a standard empirical growth model using country panel data from 1950-2015....

A combination of changing migration patterns and US immigration restrictions acted to shift the male-female balance in many ethnic groups in the early 20th Century. I use this variation to study the consequences of changing sex ratios for the children of immigrants. Immigrant sex ratios affected...

We investigate how the number and size of local political jurisdictions in an area is determined. Our model focuses on the tradeoff between the benefits of economies of scale and the costs of a heterogeneous population. We consider heterogeneity in income, race, ethnicity, and religion, and we...

The purpose of this paper is to estimate demographic differentials in alcohol and illicit drug use, participation, own price effects and cross price effects. This paper uses a data set of over 49,000 individuals from the National Household Survey of Drug Abuse and links drug and alcohol prices...

We assess the evidence on the contribution of changes in the population age structure to the changing fortunes of youths in labor markets in advanced economies over the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, and use this evidence to project the likely effects of future cohort sizes on youth labor...

This papers examines the relationship between demographic structure and the level of government spending on K-12 education. Panel data for the U.S. states over the 1960-1990 period suggests that an increase in the fraction of elderly residents in a jurisdiction is associated with a significant...

Equity in housing is a major component of household wealth in the United States. Steady gains in housing prices over the last several decades have generated large potential gains in household wealth among homeowners. Mankiw and Weil (1989) and McFadden (1993b) have argued that the aging of the...

This paper examines the impact of the aging demographic structure of the U.S. on its funded private pension system. A 75-year outlook is produced for the pension system corresponding to the 75-year forecast of the Social Security system. The primary result is that the pension system will cease...

Research on intergenerational transmission of wealth has pointed to uncertainty -- about the date of one's own death, for example -- as a potential source of significant bequest flows. In this paper I examine the effects of this same uncertainty on the behavior of those who expect to receive...

Real house prices are directly determined by the willingness of households to pay for (and willingness of builders to supply) a constant-quality house. Changes in the quantity of housing demanded will affect real prices only to the extent that the long-run housing supply schedule is positively...