Paul Samuelson made a series of important contributions to population theory for humans and other species, evolutionary theory, and the theory of age structured life cycles in economic equilibrium and growth. The work is highly abstract but much of it was intended to illuminate issues of...

This paper develops a unified growth model that captures the historical evolution of population, technology, and output. It encompasses the endogenous transition between three regimes that have characterized economic development. The economy evolves from a Malthusian regime, where technological...

This chapter explores the ways in which changing the age structure of the population in the macroeconomic models affects variables, such as consumption, wages, government spending, and saving. The chapter also presents the basic data on the ways in which the age structure of the population is...

We develop a novel method for assessing the effect of constraints imposed by spatially-fixed natural resources on aggregate economic output. We apply it to estimate and compare the projected effects of climate change and population growth over the course of the 21st century, by country and...

There is a long-standing debate on how population growth affects national economies. The authors, led by Harvard economist David Bloom, examine the history of this debate and synthesize current research on the topic. They conclude that population age structure, more than size or growth per se,...

Recent studies show that almost all industrial countries have experienced dramatic decreases in both fertility and mortality rates. This situation has led to aging societies with economies that suffer from both a decline in the working population and a rise in fiscal deficits linked to increased...