statistical fallacy of ageing population

[Brad De Long]

>From: sawicky at epinet.org (Max Sawicky)
>To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Subject: RE: statistical fallacy of ageing population
>Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 09:26:25 -0500
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>> . . .
>> What all this means for Social Security is a different story, of course.
>> Summers and his coauthors conclude, through arguments I sort-of follow--a
>> smaller workforce requires a smaller capital stock; other industrial
>> countries are aging even faster, and therefore will be investing in the
>> US; slower population growth is associated with faster productivity
>> growth--that demographic shifts indicate a lower, not higher savings rate,
>> and in particular that "population aging does not constitute a strong
>> argument for accumulating a large social security trust fund."
>
>Could you provide a cite for this paper?
>I'd like to put up a billboard across
>from the White House emblazoned with
>the last sentence you quote.
>
>MBS
>

"An Aging Society, Opportunity or Challenge?" Brookings Papers on Economic
Activity, sometime in the early 1990s, authors some subset of Louise
Sheiner, David Cutler, Larry Summers, and Jim Poterba.

Go easy on Larry. Remember the papers that he and I wrote late in the 1980s
supporting a Tobin Tax...

Brad DeLong