This paper shows how a shorter fecundity horizon for females (a biological constraint) leads to age and educational disparities between husbands and wives. Empirical support is based on data from a natural experiment commencing before and ending after China's 1980 one-child law. The results...

This article in the Economic Insights series examines two questions: (1) Which groups of Canadian workers have experienced stronger real wage growth over the past three decades?; and (2) To what extent do individuals' acquisition of education, general work experience, and seniority within firms,...

Fundamental reform of traditional Japanese labour market practices is essential to cope with rapid population ageing and the era of 100-year lives. A shift to more flexible employment and wage systems based on performance rather than age would enable Japan to better utilise its human capital....

This chapter explores the relationship between poverty and aging, in terms of its measurement and trends, as well as its alleviation, with particular attention to the most vulnerable individuals at each end of the age distribution. The measurement addresses both the definition of poverty and its...

Japan faces serious demographic headwinds. Under current fertility, employment and immigration rates, the population would fall by 45% by 2100 and employment by 52%. Given the challenges of a shrinking and ageing population, the government has pledged to “create a children-first economic...

This paper presents four policy options to make Social Security sustainable under the coming demographic shift: 1) increase payroll taxes by 6 percentage points, 2) reduce the replacement rates of the benefit formula by one-third, 3) raise the normal retirement age from sixty-six to...

In almost all Western economies the median age of the workforce is increasing due to demographic factors. Given the empirical fact that workers of different ages are not perfect substitutes in production, this paper explores how change in the age pattern affects wages and (un)employment. We...

The probability that an individual participates in the labor force declines precipitously beyond age 50. This feature of labor supply suggests that ongoing shifts in the age distribution of the population will put substantial downward pressure on the aggregate labor force participation rate....

This paper discusses intergenerational equity in terms of age of retirement and average number of years to be spent in retirement for successive cohorts in Canada. It demonstrates that using average retirement age (or median retirement age) as was done in the past in Canada, leads to very...