TY  - JOUR
AU  - Krueger,Dirk
AU  - Ludwig,Alexander
TI  - On the Consequences of Demographic Change for Rates of Returns to Capital, and the Distribution of Wealth and Welfare
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12453
PY  - 2006
Y2  - August 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12453
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12453.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Dirk Krueger
Department of Economics
University of Pennsylvania
3718 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Tel: 215/898-6691
Fax: 215/573-2057
E-Mail: dkrueger@econ.upenn.edu

Alexander Ludwig
University of Cologne 
E-Mail: ludwig@wiso.uni-koeln.de
AB  - This paper employs a multi-country large scale Overlapping Generations model with uninsurable labor productivity and mortality risk to quantify the impact of the demographic transition towards an older population in industrialized countries on world-wide rates of return, international capital flows and the distribution of wealth and welfare in the OECD. We find that for the U.S. as an open economy, rates of return are predicted to decline by 86 basis points between 2005 and 2080 and wages increase by about 4.1%. If the U.S. were a closed economy, rates of return would decline and wages increase by less. This is due to the fact that other regions in the OECD will age even more rapidly; therefore the U.S. is "importing" the more severe demographic transition from the rest of the OECD in the form of larger factor price changes. In terms of welfare, our model suggests that young agents with little assets and currently low labor productivity gain, up to 1% in consumption, from higher wages associated with population aging. Older, asset-rich households tend to lose, because of the predicted decline in real returns to capital.
ER  -