Consumption and labor earnings differ markedly from one another over the life cycle. These differences are made possible by various kinds of reallocations from one age to another. The reallocations take many forms, but they can be grouped into three analytically motivated categories.

This paper revisits the literature on overlapping generations models in the demographic context of a continuous age distribution and a general age schedule of mortality. We show that most of the static results known for the 3 or N age-group models can be extended to the continuous model. Some...

Probabilistic population forecasts are useful because they describe uncertainty in a quantitatively useful way. One approach (that we call LT) uses historical data to estimate stochastic models (e.g., a time series model) of vital rates, and then makes forecasts. Another (we call it RS) began as...

Population aging, and changing population age distributions, affect the fiscal situation through multiple channels, including the following: ; 1. Changing age distributions alter the per worker cost of providing a given age-vector of per capita benefits. For example, population aging will...

We present stochastic forecasts of the Social Security trust fund by modeling key demographic and economic variables as historical time series, and using the fitted models to generate computer simulations of future fund performance. We evaluate several plans for achieving long-term solvency by...