Serving the old: ageing and economic growth

Abstract

This paper focuses on the effect that population ageing has on the production structure of the economy and consequently on economic growth. We consider an economy that consists of a service sector and a commodity sector. Productivity growth only occurs in the latter sector and is assumed to depend positively on its size. We show that if old agents mainly demand labour-intensive services, the effect of increasing longevity on growth depends on the substitutability of labour and capital in a closed economy. However, ageing unambiguously decreases long-run growth in a small open economy.