Suchergebnisse

In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty uses the market value of tradable assets to measure both productive capital and wealth. As a measure of wealth this is problematic because it ignores the value of human capital and transfer wealth, which have grown enormously over the last 300 years. Thus the constancy of the wealth/income ratio as portrayed in his data is an illusion. Further, the types of wealth that he does not measure are more equally distributed than tradable assets. The approach also incorrectly identifies capital gains due to reduced discount rates as increases in the capital stock.

Population aging is primarily the result of past declines in fertility, which produced a decadeslong period in which the ratio of dependents to working age adults was reduced. Rising old-age dependency in many countries represents the inevitable passing of this "demographic dividend." Societies use three methods to transfer resources to people in dependent age groups: government, family, and personal saving. In developed countries, families are predominant in supporting children, while government is the main source of support for the elderly. The most important means by which aging will affect aggregate output is the distortion from taxes to fund PAYGO pensions.