Year: 2019
Type: report
Abstract: We quantify the role of population aging in the structural transformation process.Householdlevel data from the U.S. show that the fraction of expenditures devoted to services increases with household age.We use a shift-share decomposition and a quantitative model to show that U.S. population aging accounted for about a fifth of the observed increase in the service share in consumption between 1982 and 2016.The contribution of population aging to the rise in the service share is about the same size as the contribution of real income growth, and about half as large as that of changes in relative prices.
DOI: 10.3386/w26327
Authors: Javier Cravino, Andrei Levchenko, Marco Rojas
Institutions: National Bureau of Economic Research, University of Michigan
Language: English
Topic: Economic Theory and Policy
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: National Science Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W2974996483