Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Longevity and Aggregate Savings

Contents:

Author Info

  • Eytan Sheshinski

    ()

Abstract

For the last fifty years, countries in Asia and elsewhere witnessed a surge in aggregate savings per capita. Many empirical studies attribute this trend to the highly significant increases in life longevity of the populations of these countries. Some argue that the rise in savings is short-run, to be eventually dissipated by the dissaving of the elderly, whose proportion in the population rises along with longevity. This paper examines whether these conclusions are supported by economic theory. A model of life cycle decisions with uncertain survival is used to derive individuals’savings and chosen retirement age response to changes in longevity. Conditions on the age-profile of improvements in survival probabilities are shown to be necessary in order to predict the direction of this response (the uneven history of age specific improvements in longevity is recorded by Cutler (2004)). Population theory (e.g. Coale (1952)) is used to derive the dependence of the steady-state population age density on longevity. This, in turn, enables the explicit aggregation of individual response functions and a comparative steady-state analysis. Sufficient conditions for a sustainable positive effect of increased longevity on aggregate savings per capita are then derived. The importance of the availability of insurance markets is briefly discussed.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://ratio.huji.ac.il/sites/default/files/publications/dp403.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by The Center for the Study of Rationality, Hebrew University, Jerusalem in its series Discussion Paper Series with number dp403.

as in new window
Length: 16 pages
Date of creation: Aug 2005
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:huj:dispap:dp403

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Feldman Building - Givat Ram - 91904 Jerusalem
Phone: +972-2-6584135
Fax: +972-2-6513681
Email:
Web page: http://www.ratio.huji.ac.il/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: longevity; life cycle savings; retirement age; aggregate savings;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Kotlikoff, Laurence J & Summers, Lawrence H, 1981. "The Role of Intergenerational Transfers in Aggregate Capital Accumulation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(4), pages 706-32, August.
  2. Zilcha, Itzhak & Friedman, Joseph, 1985. "Saving behavior in retirement when life horizon is uncertain," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 17(1-2), pages 63-66.
  3. Wojciech Kopczuk & Joseph Lupton, 2005. "To Leave or Not To Leave: The Distribution of Bequest Motives," NBER Working Papers 11767, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Lorentzen, Peter L. & McMillan, John & Wacziarg, Romain, 2005. "Death and Development," CEPR Discussion Papers 5246, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  5. Tomas J. Philipson & Gary S. Becker, 1998. "Old-Age Longevity and Mortality-Contingent Claims," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(3), pages 551-573, June.
  6. Miles, David, 1999. "Modelling the Impact of Demographic Change upon the Economy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(452), pages 1-36, January.
  7. David E. Bloom & David Canning & Bryan Graham, 2002. "Longevity and Life Cycle Savings," NBER Working Papers 8808, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  8. Kinugasa, Tomoko & Mason, Andrew, 2007. "Why Countries Become Wealthy: The Effects of Adult Longevity on Saving," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 1-23, January.
  9. Ronald D Lee & Andrew Mason & Tim Miller, 1998. "Saving, Wealth, and Population," Working Papers 199805, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
  10. Eytan Sheshinski, 2006. "Note on Longevity and Aggregate Savings," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 108(2), pages 353-356, 07.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Gielen, A. C., 2007. "Working Hours Flexibility and Older Workers' Labor Supply," Discussion Paper 2007-49, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
  2. Paul De Grauwe & Pablo Rovira Kaltwasser, 2006. "A Behavioral Finance Model of the Exchange Rate with Many Forecasting Rules," CESifo Working Paper Series 1849, CESifo Group Munich.
  3. Schultz, T. Paul, 2009. "The Gender and Generational Consequences of the Demographic Transition and Population Policy: An Assessment of the Micro and Macro Linkages," Working Papers 71, Yale University, Department of Economics.
  4. David E. Bloom & David Canning & Rick Mansfield & Michael Moore, 2006. "Demographic Change, Social Security Systems, and Savings," NBER Working Papers 12621, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. Owen O'Donnell & Federica Teppa & Eddy van Doorslaer, 2008. "Can subjective survival expectations explain retirement behaviour?," DNB Working Papers 188, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
  6. Kam-Ki Tang & Benjamin ShiJie Wong, . "The Ageing, Longevity and Crowding Out Effects on Private and Public Savings: Evidence from Dynamic Panel Analysis," MRG Discussion Paper Series 3409, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
  7. Antoine Bommier, 2008. "Rational Impatience ?," Working Papers hal-00441880, HAL.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:huj:dispap:dp403

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Ilan Nehama).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.