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In the coming decades, the aging of European population will continue at a rapid pace. The National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodology breaks down the income and consumption by age to analyze the impact of population aging on economic sustainability and economy in general. This chapter uses fully comparable results of NTA for 25 European Union countries in 2010 to indicate the potential increase in dependency in the future given the current institutional setting. Next to the conventionally defined demographic dependency ratio, we add (1) the NTA dependency ratio using the age patterns of production and consumption in the market and (2) the National Time Transfer Accounts dependency ratio using age patterns of production and consumption originating from unpaid work that is mostly provided within the households. The authors show that imbalances will originate from the impact of population aging on market part of the economy. Further, some imbalances will also be coming from unpaid work but of much lesser extent.

Aging in Japan is advancing faster than in other major developed nations, and this is expected to have substantial effects on the country’s economic systems, including its social security system. What kind of effect will the falling birth rate, aging society and declining population have on the real estate market? Will the often mentioned real estate price asset meltdown really occur? The purpose of this paper is to address these questions by investigating how much demographic factors affected real estate prices in Japan and the USA.

The authors use regional panel data for Japan and the USA real estate prices and estimate the effects of demographic factors, such as dependency ratio, i.e. the ratio of population aged 65+ to population aged 20-64. For Japan, as no region-by-region quality-adjusted housing price indexes covering the entire country exist, data are constructed by conducting quality adjustment using hedonic regression.

Both in Japan and the USA, real estate prices in a region are inversely correlated with the old age dependency ratio in that region, and positively correlated with the total number of population in that region. The demographic factor had a greater impact on real estate prices in Japan than in the USA. For Japan, it was also found that demographic impact on land prices will be −2.4 per cent per year in 2012-2040, while it was −3.7 per cent per year in 1976-2010, suggesting that aging will continue to have downward pressure on land prices over the next 30 years, although the demographic impact will be slightly smaller than it was in 1976-2010, as the old age dependency ratio will not increase as much as it did before.

Japan’s regional panel data are newly constructed based on a hedonic approach. Analyzing the effect of dependency ratio for Japan and the USA panel data is a new challenge. Forecasting future impact of demographic factor on Japan’s land prices based on the population forecast is a new challenge.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of a declining birth rate and an increasing old age‐population ratio on Ireland's economic output.

This paper utilises data on the birth rate, old‐age population ratio, economic output and labour effort of the Irish economy to estimate a vector‐autoregressive model. The results of this model are then analysed to test for the presence of Granger causality among these variables. In doing so it is possible to assess whether there are statistically significant causal relationships existing among these factors. Subsequently, impulse response functions are derived from this model in order to assess the magnitude of the causal relationships.

The results suggest that declining fertility rates and increases in the old‐age dependency ratio have a significant impact on labour effort and economic output. Labour effort is also found to explain variation in the fertility rate and economic output. Economic output is found to effect labour effort and the fertility rate.

The results derived in this paper raise interesting policy implications. It is evident that Ireland's declining birth rate and increasing old‐age population ratio are creating a demographic situation which will have implications for future economic growth. Policies need to be put in place to mitigate the negative effects these factors will have on Irish growth.

This paper adopts modern econometric techniques to assess the causal relationships which exist between the demographic and economic factors considered. These have not previously been applied to the Irish situation. In doing this, this paper provides an important insight into the changing dynamics of the Irish economy.

The purpose of this paper is to re‐examine the effect of population ageing on private saving, taking into account the fact that ageing is brought about by not only rising old‐aged dependency but also expanding longevity.

The study uses panel data of 22 OECD countries from 1961 to 2010. Linear and non‐linear panel regression methods are used. The study takes into account the time series characteristic of the data, such as the deterministic trend present in old‐age dependency ratio.

Longevity consistently has a significant positive impact on savings, while old‐aged dependency rate has no discernible impact once country‐specific time trends in the data are accounted for. The general finding within the literature where old‐age dependency exerts a negative impact on savings is sensitive to the manner in which the data is handled and/or the sample selected.

First, the authors jointly consider rising old‐aged dependency and expanding longevity on savings, thus avoiding potential omitted variable bias in previous studies. Second, they explore non‐linearity in the savings‐ageing relationship which was ignored previously. Third, they identify whether saving rate and demographic measures are sharing common stochastic trends or driven by individual deterministic trends to avoid spurious regression results.

This study examines the long-run and short-run impact of demographic factors, i.e. life expectancy, fertility rate and young dependency ratio in determining the economic growth of South Asian countries.

The theoretical foundation of the study relies on demographic transition theory and incorporates life expectancy, fertility rate and young dependency ratio into the production function by means of human capital component. The study uses annual panel data of four South Asian courtiers, i.e. Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka from 1980 to 2018 and utilizes panel ARDL model to analyze the long run and short run impact of demographic factors on economic growth.

Results show that real stock of capital, fertility rate and life expectancy are positively related with economic growth, while an increase in young dependency ratio reduces economic growth in South Asian countries in the long run. Short-run dynamics show that real stock of capital and life expectancy have insignificant impact on economic growth, while young dependency ratio has negative and significant as well as life expectancy has positive and significant impact on economic growth in South Asian countries. Unidirectional causality exists from young dependency ratio and fertility rate to GDP per capita in the short run.

Government has to design policies for better health and education facilities to yield high economic growth as well as better infrastructure and macroeconomic stability to facilitate capital accumulation in the region to foster economic growth.

This study considerably adds into the existing literature by providing better understanding of various demographic aspects and their economic inference by highlighting the demographic changes that South Asia has endured. This study is also beneficial for policymakers and growth analysts in generating effective and sustainable policies regarding population dynamics and economic development of the region.

This chapter introduces demographic variables in empirical regression to help find whether demographic changes have an impact on economic growth. There is evidence from estimated values in this chapter to suggest that there is no impact that demographic changes in Hong Kong is affecting the economic growth. The population growth has purely a transition impact where the fertility rate was low in early 2000 up to 2015 as the size of the dependency ratio increases. Besides testing demographic variables the government emphasises better education for all people of ages for prosperous growth but in fact has a negative response on educational investment on the growth of the economy. A well-educated country individual does not suggest a higher productivity in economy growth. An important implication is that there has been no single variable as yet that has seriously impacted the economy growth, but there will be changes in the coming years and has to be attended in result to avoid a diminishing economy.

How will labour markets adapt to population ageing? The demographic shift to be experienced over coming decades requires some sort of adjustment in working lives to balance increased longevity. But where in the lifecycle should this adjustment take place? It often seems to be assumed that ever‐longer working lives are the only answer: the purpose of this article is to query this assumption and to suggest that there should be a balance of employment and other uses of time across the entire lifecycle.

The article analyses the impact of increased economic activity on the dependency ratio and it identifies plausible upper bounds to employment objectives by age and gender using international comparative data.

Increased employment for over‐65s is likely to have limited impact on age dependency ratio: bigger impacts would be expected from the 55‐65 age group and younger women.

The article brings comparative evidence to bear on labour market implications of population ageing.

Issues associated with retirement in general, and phased transitions into retirement in particular, are taking on increased importance for a variety of reasons. Outlines those reasons, paying particular attention to the practice of mandatory retirement. Presents age dependency ratios for the OECD to highlight the importance of these issues in the context of an ageing and longer‐lived workforce relative to a smaller working age population. Then discusses the prevalence of mandatory retirement in Canada and the USA, and presents empirical evidence from Canada on variables associated with retiring because of mandatory retirement. The Canadian case is of particular interest, because mandatory retirement in Canada has generally not been banned, which is in marked contrast with the situation in the USA, where it has been banned as constituting age discrimination. The public and legal debate over the issue of mandatory retirement has also been extensive in Canada, and this debate may provide information for other countries dealing with the issue. Ends with an assessment of the extent to which mandatory retirement exerts a constraining influence on transitions into retirement. The essential argument is that its constraining impact is not as simple as it may initially appear. To the extent that mandatory retirement is an intricate part of the compensation and human resource function of firms, banning it can have important implications for those functions and, in turn, for transitions into retirement. The complexities of these issues and dramatically increasing old‐age dependency ratios will ensure that this is an area of growing importance for public policy and human resource management.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries are facing unprecedented challenges related to climate change and population aging. The purpose of the analysis is to explore the relationship between population aging and environmental degradation, accounting for human capital, using a sample of 19 OECD countries over the period 1980–2019.

On the empirical methodology, the analysis uses panel estimators with heterogenous coefficients and an error structure that takes into consideration cross-country heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence for a panel of 19 OECD countries over the period 1980–2019. To examine the relationship between population aging and environmental degradation, the authors employ two alternative measures of environmental degradation that is energy consumption and CO2 emissions in metric tons per capita. Concerning the regressors, the authors account for two alternative aging indicators, namely the elderly population and the old-age dependency ratios to confirm robustness.

The analysis provides evidence that population aging and human capital development (IHC) lead to lower energy consumption in the OECD sample. Overall, the growing number of elderly people in the OECD seems to act as a mitigating factor for energy consumption. The authors view these results as conveying the message that the evolution of population aging along with channeling government expenditures towards human capital enhancement are important drivers of curbing energy consumption and ensuring environmental sustainability. The authors' research is of great significance for environmental policymakers by illuminating the favorable energy consumption patterns that population aging brings to advanced economies.

The main limitation of this study concerns data availability. Future research, and subject to greater data availability in the future, could dig deeper into understanding the dynamics of this complex nexus by incorporating additional control variables. Similarly, the authors focus on aggregate renewable energy consumption, and the authors do not explicitly model the sources of renewable energy (wind, hydropower, solar power, solid biofuels and other). Additional analysis of the breakdown of renewable energy sources would be insightful – subject to data availability – especially for meeting the recently agreed new target of 42.5% for European Union (EU) countries by 2030. A deep transformation of the European energy system is needed for the EU to meet the target. Finally, extending the model to include a range of non-OECD countries that are also experiencing demographic transformations is a promising avenue for future research.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to examine the effects of population aging and human capital on environmental degradation using a broad set of OECD countries and advanced spectrum estimation methods. Given cross-sectional dependencies and cross-country heterogeneity, the authors' empirical results underline the importance of cross-OECD policy spillovers and knowledge diffusions across the OECD countries. The new “energy culture” calls for concerted policy action even in an aging era.