Suchergebnisse

Projections of population size, growth rates and age distribution, although extending to distant horizons, shape policies today for the economy, environment, and government programs such as public pensions and health care. The projections can lead to costly policy adjustments which in turn can cause political and economic turmoil. The United Nations projects global population to grow from about 7 billion today to 9.3 billion in 2050 and 10.1 billion in 2100 while the Old Age Dependency Ratio doubles by 2050 and triples by 2100. How are such population projections made, and how certain can we be about the trends they foresee?

According to a report recently issued by the Technical Panel for the US Social Security Administration, the long‐term financial outlook for the system is worse than previously thought. The worsening projected by the panel in the long‐run funding imbalance of the Social Security System is mostly due to the recommendation by the panel to add an extra four years to the currently projected increase in life expectancy by 2075: from 81.8 years to 85.9 years. The panel recommended no change in the current intermediate projected long‐run TFR of 1.9 and net immigration of 900,000 persons per year. The recommendation to increase the projected gains in life expectancy was based on international trends as well as on historical trends in the United States and the absence of biological evidence ruling out such gains. Industrial countries have a history of under‐predicting the growth of their elderly population, and it is expected that large mortality adjustments may be needed in the projections for public pension programs also in industrial countries other than the United States.

Externalities to childbearing are costs & benefits of children that do not accrue directly to the parents, or pass through economic markets, but instead are passed on to society at large. If there were no such externalities, then individually optimal fertility decisions would also be socially optimal. Government intervention in reproduction is often justified on the grounds that negative, or sometimes positive, childbearing externalities are important. Here, such externalities are conceptualized & estimated for the US, India, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, & Kenya, using a variety of statistical sources for the 1980s. There are four categories: reproductive dilution of collective wealth; cost spreading for public goods; public sector age-related revenues & expenditures (health, education, pensions, & taxes); & other governmental expenditures. The age structure of government taxes & transfers creates large positive externalities in industrial welfare states, but small negative ones in developing countries. Public goods lead to sizable positive externalities in both groups of countries, while other government expenditures lead to sizable negative externalities. Collective wealth leads to enormous negative externalities in some countries, but in others is unimportant. While environmental wealth is not examined here, it might turn out to dominate these other items. 1 Table, 3 Figures. AA

---