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In this paper, we extend the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodology to obtain the age profiles simultaneously disaggregated by gender, education level and family structure. We present the results for four countries (Austria, Spain, Finland and the UK), analysing the roles of these three dimensions in the both inter and intragenerational distribution of resources. We find interesting differences across countries, some of them related to the degree and age direction of the familiarization of different welfare state regimes. Finland excels as the country with the highest level of public transfers, and in particular for the elderly and for parents of working ages. In Austria, public transfers are also generous for children and the elderly, and there are substantial family benefits. In the UK and Spain, public transfers are much lower and family-related allowances are almost insignificant. Consequently, in Spain, private transfers from parents to children are the highest, while in the UK asset reallocations play a significant role in financing elderly consumption. Overall, our analysis provides interesting insights on how gender, redistribution policies and family structure interact with the welfare organization.

The impact of population structure on economic growth has been studied in recent decades using different methods to estimate the so‐called demographic dividend. Besides, education has been pointed out as a key factor in economic growth. We propose a decomposition of the demographic dividend, into age and education effects. We illustrate the potentialities of the method, deriving an application to Mexico and Spain over the period 1970‐2100. To that end, we estimate the National Transfer Accounts age profiles by schooling level and apply them to recently available population projections stratified by education level. Our results confirm the role of population age structure in the demographic dividend, but also reveal that education attainment can be even more crucial. Moreover, we find that how both age and education effects finally impact on economic growth depends to a great extent on the specific consumption and labor income age profiles in each country.

This research investigates how the interplay between demographics, economics and welfare state transfers affects the impact of the ageing process on income redistribution, at both intra and intergenerational levels. We combine different EU comparable data sources with microsimulation techniques in order to measure how agents resort to the three available resource allocation devices over their lifecycle (asset market and public and private transfers), extending the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodology at the micro level. Agents are heterogeneous in age, gender, education level and family type. Simulating population dynamics at the micro level allows us to capture not only the ageing process but also the educational transition and the change in family structures occurring in parallel. The resulting projection model allows us to simulate the lifetime net transfers received by individuals from the government and the family, and to compute the adjustment needed to keep the sustainability of the welfare system. The analysis is applied to four European countries representing different welfare state regimes (Spain, Austria, Finland and the United Kingdom). We find differences in the role of private and public transfers in intra and intergenerational redistribution across countries, which can be linked to the various welfare state regimes. Apart from the expected differences observed by gender and by education level, there are significant differences in the interplay between private and public transfers related to parenthood. While parents privately transfer substantially more than childless people in all studied countries, the Austrian welfare state is the only one that compensates high and medium education groups for these differences through higher public transfers to parents. Such compensation is much weaker and more targeted towards the lower educated in the other countries.