population increase economic growth educational inequality and income distribution some recent evidence abstract using a recent inter country sample impacts of population increase short run growth rate and educational level and inequality on income distribution are assessed as in almost all other studies high population increase is observed to be a disequalizer however unlike the position indicated in several earlier studies rapid short run economic growth seems to reduce income inequality while higher mean schooling level appears to be a mild equalizer contrary to the results reported by earlier researchers no adverse effect of educational inequality on income distribution is found

does survey recall error explain the deaton paxson puzzle using recall and diary food expenditure data from canada we compare estimates of the household size elasticity of per capita food expenditure in contrast to gibson 2002 we find negative elasticities in both recall and diary data this in turn means we find evidence of the deaton paxson puzzle in both diary and recall data recall error cannot be the sole explanation of the puzzle

income adjustments and the role of consumers durables in some leading consumption functions in a seminal study davidson et al i978 hereafter dhsy introduced the error correction form of the consumption function this has proved to be robust to new data and different time periods see hendry i983 and has formed the basis of the consumption equations in several macroeconometric models see davis i 984 in subsequent studies hendry and von ungern sternberg i 98i hereafter hus and von ungern sternberg i 98 i modified the dhsy equation in a number of ways one of particular interest herein was to redefine the income measure to net out the effect of gains or losses due to inflation on liquid assets we consider here two related potential improvements to these widely used consumption functions one concerns the appropriate definition of income if there are not only liquid assets which suffer a value loss under certain conditions but also durable goods which depreciate the other is related to this and concerns an appropriate specification of the steady state consumption function whether static or dynamic for non durables which we take to include services which recognises the existence of durable consumption goods it is argued that if care is not taken the dhsy equation implies a misspecification which leads to an over estimate of the mean lag relating the consumption of non durables to income

a decomposition analysis of the trend in uk income inequality post war britain has experienced a number of dramatic demographic and social changes that have undoubtedly influenced the distribution of income there has been a rise in the number of pensioners whose incomes are relatively low a considerable increase in the number of young and old households living on their own and a remarkable expansion in the proportion of working wives the potential importance of these structural changes suggests that their impact on the income distribution needs to be examined systematically before any attempt can be made to interpret the observed trend in overall income inequality adequately the method usually adopted for this purpose attempts to create a comparable time series of distributions based on the structural characteristics pertaining in one particular year for example if we wished to investigate the effect of shifts in the age structure of the population this approach would disaggregate the distribution in one year tl and estimate what the distribution would have been like if the age structure had been the same as that observed in some other year to on the assumption that other distributional characteristics such as ageincome differentials and inequality within age groups remain invariant to this demographic change the comparison between the actual distribution at t1 and the constructed distribution at t1 with to s age structure is taken to indicate the impact of changes in the age structure over the period concerned this comparison can be presented in terms of quantile shares summary measures of inequality or the entire lorenz curves this approach known as shift share analysis or standardising the inequality series see semple i975 love and wolfson i976 dinwiddy and reed i977 royal commission i977 rowley and henderson i978 macleod and horner i980 is perfectly adequate for simple and straightforward structural changes when several changes are occurring simultaneously however it becomes difficult to identify the contribution of the individual factors and to assess their relative importance to the overall trend in inequality furthermore the combined impact of several structural influences will not in general sum up to the inequality change requiring explanation the purpose of this paper is to propose an alternative method of analysing

ageing the great challenge to health care reform abstract this contribution is an attempt to analyze an issue that seems to be frequently skirted over when discussing reforms of today s health care systems practitioners of health insurance point out the fact that a major share of medical care services goes to the uppermost age brackets who are believed to be unresponsive to the financial incentives such as cost sharing and bonuses for no claims that are being considered as innovations in the financing of health care at the same time rapid growth in the numbers of the old and very old is predicted for virtually all oecd countries acting in combination these two factors appear to undercut the rationale of conventional cost containment strategies in health care a closer look at the matter even reveals that a major part of lifetime health resources are spent during the last few months of human life economists are therefore challenged to explain a puzzle why is it that such a great deal of resources is dedicated to investments that will in all likelihood be characterized by a very short payoff period in an attempt at answering this question the decision situations facing the dying patient and his family treating physicians and politicians acting as agents of the population at large will be examined in turn of course no easy way out can be expected to result from this exercise nevertheless economic analysis can be counted upon to provide at least cues concerning the incentives that have to be built into future insurance contracts physician payment schemes and modes of hospital finance for dealing with the challenge to the health care system posed by a rapidly ageing population

the strategic bequest motive although recent research suggests that intergenerational transfers play an important role in aggregate capital accumulation our understanding of bequest motives remains incomplete we develop a simple model of strategic bequests in which a testator influences the decisions of his beneficiaries by holding wealth in bequeathable forms and by conditioning the division of bequests on the beneficiaries actions the model generates falsifiable empirical predictions that are inconsistent with other theories of intergenerational transfers we present econometric and other evidence that strongly suggests that bequests are often used as compensation for services rendered by beneficiaries

housing markets consumption and financial liberalisation in the major economies abstract this paper analyses the implications of relaxing credit restrictions in housing finance markets a theoretical model of the interaction of financial and housing markets and forward looking agents is developed the effects of financial liberalisation in the model are analysed and evidence from the u s a and u k on the impact of easing credit restrictions is presented estimates are also made of the degree to which credit restrictions may bind on households in those countries where the range of mortgage products on offer is still more limited than in the u k and u s a simulations are undertaken to gauge the effect on consumption saving and bequests of wealth of possible future convergence in national systems of housing finance

seasonality in dynamic regression models this paper examines the implications of treating seasonality as an unobserved component which changes slowly over time this approach simplifies the specification of dynamic relationships by separating non seasonal from seasonal factors we illustrate this approach using the consumption model of davidson et al 1978 and estimate a stable error correction model between consumption income and prices over the period 1958 92 more generally we argue that autoregressive models are unlikely to successfully model slowly changing seasonality and may confound seasonal effects with the dynamic responses of prime interest our approach can be used in a wide range of cases and we show that there is little loss in efficiency even if seasonality is deterministic

understanding the mechanisms of economic development in this paper i advocate the investigation testing and modification of mechanisms as a progressive empirical research strategy for the field of economic development and other areas of applied economics i discuss three lines of work that have elucidated mechanisms that are relevant for development 1 connections between saving and growth 2 the determinants of commodity prices which are a key source of income for many developing countries and 3 some unexpected puzzles that arise in considering the linkages between income and food consumption in each case my discussion illustrates the positivist approach to the hypotheticodeductive method in this approach mechanisms are proposed key predictions derived and tested and if falsified the mechanisms are rejected or modified if the predictions of a mechanism are confirmed if they are sufficiently specific and if they are hard to explain in other ways we attach additional credence to the mechanism albeit provisionally since later evidence may undermine it sometimes the falsifications can be repaired by changing supplementary assumptions and sometimes they involve long steps backwards where the model is abandoned and often there is disagreement about which is the correct response but the end result is an accumulation of useful knowledge and understanding

economists and the welfare state abstract this paper constrasts the views of the welfare state of economists in the 1940s and 1950s with those of the current generation it is argued that economists as a profession in particular in the scandinavian countries have changed from being strong spokesmen for the welfare state to becoming much more critical the reasons for this are sought both in the expansion of the public sector in recent decades and in the development of economic theory in the areas of public finance insurance and incentives and public choice an attempt is made to evaluate the importance of the empirical and theoretical developments for the changing views of the welfare state

taxation pension and saving in a small open economy an overlapping generations model of a small open economy is used to explore several policy options aimed at reducing the burden of income taxes and pay as you go payg contributions on labor income so as to improve the incentives to supply labor including the return of funded collective fc pension plans in the tax base turns out to be counterproductive cutting payg benefits in contrast succeeds in improving efficiency in general and labor market incentives in particular under specific variants of the fc plan reducing payg benefits even proves to be pareto welfare improving

social security and intergenerational redistribution a generational accounting perspective this paper is concerned with the analysis of intergenerational redistribution in a pay as you go financed social security scheme instead of annual fiscal indicators we apply generational accounts to calculate the intertemporal effects arising from a projected aging process as a case study the institutional settings and the parameterization of our model refer to the conditions found in germany in 1989 additionally the intergenerational impacts of the german 1992 pension reform act are taken into account our findings suggest that the major reform measures affect the distribution of the demographic burden between future and presently living generations however the burden is shifted in favor of the generations currently alive thereby contradicting the explicit political intentions and aggravating the situation for future generations

the demand for m1 in the u s a 1960 1988 estimated u s m1 demand functions appear unstable regularly breaking down over 1960 1988 e g missing money great velocity decline m1 explosion we propose a money demand function whose arguments include inflation real income long term bond yield and risk t bill interest rates and learning curve weighted yields on newly introduced instruments in m1 and non transactions m2 the model is estimated in dynamic error correction form it is constant and with an equation standard error of 0 4 variance dominates most previous models estimating alternative specifications explains earlier breakdowns showing the model s distinctive features to be important in accounting for the data

the demand for m1 in the united states a comment on baba hendry and starr a recent paper by y baba d hendry and r starr 1992 presents an error correction model of the demand for m1 in the united states which shows a dramatic improvement in both fit and stability over earlier models this note estimates an alternative model with the same data set and draws two conclusions that the improvements are due more to the use of complex dynamics than to the introduction of variables representing financial innovation and that some of the economic properties are not robust with respect to minor changes in specification copyright 1993 by royal economic society

public pensions choices for the future abstract the purpose of this paper is to analyze to what extent pay as you go government mandated pensions can provide adequate retirement income to future generations this question is particularly relevant at times when the financial viability of public pensions is threatened by demographic aging and possibly declining productivity and when more importantly there is little consensus as to why those programs exist as they are that is mandatory public and unfunded the gist of our argument is that an aging population particularly if combined with declining productivity would jeopardize the financial and political viability of public pensions if individuals behavior doesn t adjust to this new reality and public authorities don t adopt the appropriate reforms as to mandatory retirement age payroll taxes and benefits structure among key individual decisions we focus on saving labor participation retirement education migration and fertility we consider how sensitive each of these is to changes in the environment and to changes in policy parameters then we turn to a number of issues unsolved either because of analytical complexity or because they arise from new realities

the wealth age relation among the aged aged people face the problem of allocating over the rest of their lifetimes the wealth that they have accumulated during their working years this problem is fairly complex because they are uncertain about the dates of their death and because they may wish to use their wealth to finance general consumption or hold it to meet emergencies leave estates or maintain power or status whether skilled at dynamic programming or not aged people effectively do make these decisions what are the results some studies of the entire lifetime pattern of saving and wealth tend to support the simple life cycle model in which the aged use up their wealth to help finance consumption harold lydall for example found saving rates to increase and then decrease with age in the whole population and to be negative for the group aged 65 and over guarded support for the theory was found by franco modigliani and albert ando in britain and by dorothy projector in the united states more recently a f shorrocks examined the lifetime pattern of wealth holding in estate tax data for a single cohort and found the hump pattern that is characteristic of life cycle saving other evidence on wealth holding runs contrary to this however in a study of estate tax returns in washington d c james d smith found that wealth increased with age among the aged after controlling for other demographic variables examining national estate tax data john brittain found wealth to increase with age in the united states and a b atkinson and a j harrison reported the same pattern in england and wales in a sample of tiaa annuity recipients analyzed by james mulanaphy over half reported that their total savings had increased during retirement and another quarter reported that their savings had remained about the same in this paper i examine wealth holding patterns among aged married couples using survey data representing the entire aged population of the united states in 1968 the statistical analysis serves as a test of the hypothesis that emerges from life cycle theory and provides some further exploration into the economic behavior of the aged i find that the aged tend to increase their wealth over time

the demand for m1 in the united states a reply to james m boughton using general to simple methods j m boughton 1993 develops an econometric model that fits almost as well as y baba d f hendry and r m starr bhs 1992 but differs in economic implications and dynamic adjustments he claims the new model is constant is not encompassed by bhs but does not encompass bhs he concludes that the new variables in bhs do not matter for fit or constancy the authors replicate boughton s findings but their simplification encompassing test confirms the importance of the novel variables in bhs and shows that bhs encompasses his model an explanation is offered for its constancy when previous studies suffered predictive failure

reinterpreting the dhsy 1978 consumption function with hindsight the justification for davidson hendry srba and yeo s dhsy s selection of their favoured equation is shown to be based upon contradicting assumptions about inflation the empirically supported model is argued not to have a theoretically justified error correction interpretation the exclusion of the intercept biases the error correction term such that it becomes significant and negative but undermines the theoretical plausibility of the long run target more generally the statistical need to include an intercept in any regression to avoid parameter bias is demonstrated the rise in inflation in the 1970s is not considered to be a credible explanation of the fall in the average propensity to consume apc from the 1950s and is shown to have questionable empirical support when a below unit income elasticity is allowed for the recent articles which have found support for dhsy s favoured formulation augmented by time varying parameters using the most contemporary uk data should be viewed with caution new interpretations for the dhsy model s persistent success are called for if it is not to be considered that dubious regressions have been resurrected

on error correction models specification interpretation estimation abstract error correction models ecms have proved a popular organising principle in applied econometrics despite the lack of consensus as to exactly what constitutes their defining characteristic and the rather limited role that has been given to economic theory by their proponents this paper uses a historical survey of the evolution of ecms to explain the alternative specifications and interpretations and proceeds to examine their implications for estimation the various approaches are illustrated for wage equations by application to uk labour market data 1855 1987 we demonstrate that error correction models impose strong and testable non linear restrictions on dynamic econometric equations and that they do not obviate the need for modelling the process of expectations formation with the exception of a few special cases both the non linear restrictions and the modelling of expectations have been ignored by those who have treated ecms as merely reparameterisations of dynamic linear regression models or vector autoregressions

the effect of changes in the population on several measures of income distribution an economic model is used to explore the relationship between population growth and 2 of the most commonly used income distribution statistics the share of the rich and the poor in total income and the rate of growth of real income of the rich and the poor brazilian statistics applied to the model illustrate the difficulty of interpreting the common inequality measures under conditions of rapid population growth neither income shares nor growth rates can tell much about the degree of progressivity in the growth strategy of a particular country without adjustment absolute income for the base period poor or base period teenagers was greater than reported for either the poor or teenagers however the rise in inequality was also greater for the base period population growth in brazil was seen to be even more regressive than previously thought significant upward mobility was however still possible

capital and labor saving technical change in an aging economy does population aging and the associated increase in the old age dependency ratio affect economic growth the answer is given in a novel analytical framework that allows for population aging to affect endogenous capital and labor saving technical change the short run analysis reveals that population aging induces more labor and less capital saving technical change as it increases the relative scarcity of labor with respect to capital due to external contemporaneous knowledge spill overs across innovating firms induced technical change has a first order effect on current aggregate income in the long run capitalsaving technical progress vanishes and the economy s growth rate reflects only labor saving technical change however the mere possibility of capital saving technical change is shown to imply that the economy s steady state growth rate becomes independent of its age structure neither a higher life expectancy nor a decline in fertility affects economic growth in the long run

uncertainty and optimal social security systems this paper examines the annuity aspect of social security within the framework of an overlapping generations model the duration of life is assumed to be uncertain under a fully funded system demand for social security is determined by each generation so as to maximize expected lifetime utility taking into account the welfare of future generations under a pay as you go system with intergenerational transfers demand for retirement benefits by the working population takes into account taxes paid by descendants it is shown that the two modes of finance are equivalent in terms of all real aggregates effects of changes in expected lifetime and in the birth rate are analyzed starting at the optimal level a compulsory balanced increase in social security taxes and benefits is shown to increase short run savings

job duration seniority and earnings an important stylized fact about labor markets is that workers with longer seniority with their current employer have higher earnings than other workers with the same total labor market experience this study shows that workers in longer jobs earn more throughout than workers in a series of shorter jobs and that the measured positive cross sectional return seniority is largely a statistical artifact due to the correlation of seniority with an omitted variable representing the quality of the worker the job or the worker employer match the implication is tha t earnings do not in fact rise very much with seniority copyright 1987 by american economic association

an investigation of the long run properties of aggregate non durable consumers expenditure in the united this paper estimates the effects of the modeling of nondurable consumption in the light of the five years of new data since the publication of the paper by j e h davidson et al 1978 and the development of the new cointegration technique of r f engle and c w j granger 1987 existing models are found to be inadequate on two grounds they fail parameter stability tests and they do not contain a suitable equilibrium specification the paper uses the cointegration approach to search for an encompassing model that is both stable and cointegrates the main finding is that the analysis must be extended to allow for differential income effects caused by changing higher rate income tax bands copyright 1989 by royal economic society

economies of scale household size and the demand for food household scale economies are plausibly attributed to shared household public goods that make larger households better off at the same level of per capita resources larger households should therefore have higher per capita consumption of private goods such as food provided that they do not substitute too much toward the effectively cheaper public goods the evidence shows exactly the opposite data from rich and poor countries indicate that at constant per capita total expenditure the per capita demand for food decreases with household size and that it does so most in the poorest countries where substitution should be the least

the role of intergenerational transfers in aggregate capital accumulation this paper uses historical u s data to directly estimate the contribution of intergenerational transfers to aggregate capital accumulation the evidence presented indicates that intergenerational transfers account for the vast majority of aggregate u s capital formation only a negligible fraction of actual capital accumulation can be traced to life cycle or hump savings a major difference between this study and previous investigations of this issue is the use of more accurate longitudinal age earnings and age consumption profiles these profiles are simply too flat to generate substantial life cycle savings this paper suggests the importance of and need for substantially greater research and data collection on intergenerational transfers life cycle models of savings that emphasize savings for retirement as the dominant form of capital accumulation should give way to models that illuminate the determinants of intergenerational transfers

the assessment consumer expenditure this article aims to illuminate two sets of consumption puzzles the first concerns the behavior of aggregate saving rates in the 1980s and early 1990s collapse and rebound in scandinavia and the u k and apparently a more secular decline in the u s the second set of puzzles concerns various apparent contradictions of the rational expectations permanent income hypothesis e g in time series the excess sensitivity of consumption changes to anticipated income changes and in cross sections the tendency of consumption and income age profiles to follow each other more than standard life cycle theory implies the article discusses in relatively non technical terms the implications both for euler equations and solved out consumption functions of introducing uncertainty credit constraint consumption leisure interactions habits and durability alternative to rational expectations the illiquidity of some assets and financial deregulation it also compares the merits of euler and solved out models of aggregate consumption

savings of the elderly and desired bequests cross section data often show that the wealth of the elderly increases with age even at advanced ages these and other results suggest that the life cycle hypothesis of consumption should be augmented to include a bequest motive for saving in this paper the author proposes a model of bequests and a test for a bequ est motive using panel data he finds that over a ten year period the elderly in the data set dissaved in contradiction to most cross section results the test offers no support for a bequest motive copyright 1987 by american economic association

measurement error in recall surveys and the relationship between household size and food demand variation in household survey design and implementation is used to obtain evidence of nonrandom measurement error in recall surveys of household expenditure these surveys which are used especially in developing countries appear to have measurement errors in food expenditures and in food budget shares that are correlated with household size these correlated errors may be part of the explanation for a puzzling pattern of falling food demand with rising household size in poorer countries

housing equity withdrawal and the average propensity to consume this study explains the behaviour of the average propensity to consume for durable and non durable expenditure in the uk during 1980 91 explicit attention is paid to the role of housing wealth and in particular equity withdrawal which has become more prominent as a result of financial deregulation long run relationships are estimated using the johansen procedure and from this reasonable short run equations are obtained the results indicate positive impact from housing equity withdrawal on the average propensity to consume

the consumption function in macroeconomic models a comparative study 1984 the consumption function in macroeconomic models a comparative study applied economics vol 16 no 6 pp 799 838

the dynamics of population growth differential fertility and inequality studies of population growth relative to income distribution from single equation and simultaneous equation models have shown that higher population growth rates increase inequality the reasons for this inequality contain important welfare issues including the fact that different income groups grow at different rates with lower income the fastest the differential fertility of the income groups complicates these issues the lorenz curve has often been used as a foundation of the theory of inequality comparisons and uses cumulative shares of income as a function of cumulative shares of population the mortality rates age of new entrants and the mobility across income groups must be factored in these can be analyzed simultaneously using a multistate life table which describes simultaneous transitions across age groups and states data from brazil was used to test whether increase in the fertility rates of the poor would affect income inequality the results indicate a 100 increase in the fertility of the poor which increases the percentage of poor in the equal fertility case there were decreases in the percent of poor from the original number these results confirm that inequality measures can give conflicting signals and could be inconsistent with real changes in relative welfare analyzing relationships between population growth and inequality is difficult and standard measures are inadequate to test hypotheses about the distribution effects of migration or high fertility it appears to be impossible to differentiate changes in population make up from changes in economic status

aging population problems and policy options in the us and germany aging population axel borsch supan the expected change in the age structure of the industrialized countries will lead to a dramatically higher proportion of older people in germany for example 100 employed persons now support about 40 elderly by 2030 this ratio will rise to 85 elderly people per 100 employed persons this process will deeply affect labour financial and housing markets it will strain the social security systems change the accumulation of aggregate wealth and skew its intergenerational distribution while imposing a growing burden on family support by the young generation when the elderly are becoming frail and unable to live independently this paper investigates the mechanisms at work in labour financial and housing markets drawing systematically on comparisons between german and us institutions to determine the role of taxes subsidies and regulations the evidence demonstrates that economic policies have powerful effects some of them are also currently distortionary and interact with existing market imperfections so that a serious consideration of policy options which may moderate the implications of population aging is called for

forecasting aggregate consumers expenditure in the u k using the dhsy model the performance of the dhsy model in predicting the growth of aggregate consumers expenditure in the uk over the period 1985 1988 is examined the model is applied to four different combinations of consumption variable and data type results show in all cases the predictive performance of the dhsy model to be poor however applied to seasonally adjusted data an improvement can be achieved by allowing for systematic variation in coefficients in particular a variable coefficient dhsy model displays no tendency to underpredict the growth of total consumers expenditure and accurately captures the volatility of non durable expenditure

the family inheritance and the intergenerational transmission of inequality unequal inheritance of material wealth is commonly considered a major cause of inequality in consumption however theoretical models of the intergenerational transmission of inequality by becker blinder and ishikawa imply that unequal inheritance may either increase or reduce consumption inequality differences in inherited wealth resulting from unequal parental incomes increase inequality in recipients consumption however unequal bequests caused by differences among families in the endowed ability of children or the costs of producing human capital are equalizing empirical results confirm these predictions the inheritance received by children is inversely related to both children s income and parental education thus bequests are compensatory in that ceteris paribus low income children inherit more than their advantaged contemporaries

the dynamics of population growth differential fertility and inequality note this note challenges the proposition david lam made in his attempt to examine the relationship between population growth and the distribution of income in the first 2 sections of his paper in which no income mobility was allowed lam successfully analyzed the effects of adding to the economy a group of immigrants with income distribution different from the original residents on 2 inequality measures in the 3rd section lam made the strong proposition that claims in effect in order to determine whether an increase in the ith income groups fertility would increase or reduce the steady state proportion of the ith income group all the information needed is the ith row of the mobility matrix a counterexample is presented here along with a correction for the error that is made in the derivation of lams proposition

population pensions and endogenous economic growth abstract we study the effect of a declining labor force on the incentives to engage in labor saving technical change and ask how this effect is influenced by institutional characteristics of the pension scheme when labor is scarcer it becomes more expensive and innovation investments that increase labor productivity are more profitable we incorporate this channel in a new dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous economic growth and heterogeneous overlapping generations we calibrate the model for the us economy and obtain the following results first the effect of a decline in population growth on labor productivity growth is positive and quantitatively significant in our benchmark it is predicted to increase from an average annual growth rate of 1 74 over 1990 2000 to 2 41 in 2100 second institutional characteristics of the pension system matter both for the growth performance and for individual welfare third the assessment of pension reform proposals may depend on whether economic growth is endogenous or exogenous

uncertain lifetime consumption and dissaving in retirement this paper asks whether the continued accumulation or mild dissaving observed among the retired can be explained by uncertain lifetime in the absence of annuities after an initial period influenced by borrowing constraints under constant relative risk aversion uncertain lifetime depresses consumption by a proportion increasing with age if the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption is small illustrative computations based on actual income and survival data show that plausible elasticities are sufficiently small to give this effect the reduction in consumption is large enough to explain much of the lack of decumulation by the elderly

viewpoint measuring the well being of the poor with income or consumption a canadian perspective there is a long tradition of using consumption measures derived from statistics canada s household expenditures surveys to study material well being inequality and poverty we offer an introduction to this research income and consumption measures give different pictures of the patterns of material well being in canada but the differences are not as large as in the us we also provide a comparison to meyer and sullivan s results on data quality canadian expenditure surveys are of high quality unique aspects of these surveys variation in quality control measures over time and the possibility of comparing to income tax data provide important insights into the quality of survey data on income and consumption il existe une longue tradition d utilisation de mesures de consommation derivees de l enquete des depenses des menages de statistiques canada pour mesurer le bien etre materiel l inegalite et la pauvrete les auteurs presentent ces recherches les mesures de revenus et de consommation donnent des portraits differents des patterns de bien etre materiel au canada mais les differences ne sont pas aussi importantes qu aux etats unis on presente une comparaison avec les resultats de meyer et sullivan sur la qualite des donnees les enquetes sur les depenses sont de haute qualite au canada certains aspects uniques de ces enquetes variation dans les mesures de controle de qualite dans le temps et possibilite de comparer les donnees derivees des rapports d impot sur le revenu fournissent des apercus importants sur la qualite des donnees d enquetes sur le revenu et la consommation canadian economics association

economic consequences of an aging population pip europe and japan are experiencing the aging of their populations aging implies a restructuring of the economy political issues which arise in an aging society include 1 a voting majority for the interests of the elderly 2 a voting majority of females 3 the domination of the decision power in corporate and similar ruling bodies and 4 unemployment or a long wait for promotion for younger people economic issues of an aging society include 1 population aging often occurs under reduced rates of growth of per capita national income 2 the relative economic status of the elderly very much depends on the currently existing tax transfer systems and 3 the income of families whose head is over age 65 has generally been more unequally distributed than the income for younger families issues concerning the labor supply of the elderly include 1 the availability of pension income and health limitations strongly influence decisions to retire and 2 older workers become disheartened and choose early retirement when facing bad reemployment prospects in general population aging is likely to have its most substantive effect on the overall level of productivity in an economy where technical knowledge is changing rapidly and strong competition necessitates a high degree of adaptability of the labor force