IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedfel/00142.html

Demographic Transition and Low U.S. Interest Rates

Author

Listed:
  • Carlos Carvalho
  • Andrea Ferrero
  • Fernanda Nechio

Abstract

Interest rates have been trending down for more than two decades. One possible explanation is the dramatic worldwide demographic transition, with people living longer and population growth rates declining. This demographic transition in the United States?particularly the steady increase in life expectancy?put significant downward pressure on interest rates between 1990 and 2016. Because demographic movements tend to be long-lasting, their ongoing effects could keep interest rates near the lower bound longer. This has the potential to limit the scope for central banks to respond to future recessionary shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos Carvalho & Andrea Ferrero & Fernanda Nechio, 2017. "Demographic Transition and Low U.S. Interest Rates," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfel:00142
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/el2017-27.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carvalho, Carlos & Ferrero, Andrea & Nechio, Fernanda, 2016. "Demographics and real interest rates: Inspecting the mechanism," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 208-226.
    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


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Buchner, 2020. "Fiscal Policy in an Age of Secular Stagnation," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 62(3), pages 398-429, September.
    2. John C. Williams, 2017. "What’s the Future of Interest Rates? The Answer’s in the Stars," Speech 183, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    3. soyoung Lee, 2018. "The Role of Firm Heterogeneity in the Earnings Inequality," 2018 Meeting Papers 1155, Society for Economic Dynamics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Basso, Henrique S. & Jimeno, Juan F., 2021. "From secular stagnation to robocalypse? Implications of demographic and technological changes," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 833-847.
    2. Zhengyang Jiang & Robert J. Richmond & Tony Zhang, 2024. "A Portfolio Approach to Global Imbalances," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 79(3), pages 2025-2076, June.
    3. Kollmann, Robert, 2022. "A tractable overlapping generations structure for quantitative DSGE models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    4. Garín, Julio & Lester, Robert & Sims, Eric & Wolff, Jonathan, 2019. "Without looking closer, it may seem cheap: Low interest rates and government borrowing," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 28-32.
    5. Hua Chai & Mr. Jun I Kim, 2018. "Demographics, Pension Systems and the Saving-Investment Balance," IMF Working Papers 2018/265, International Monetary Fund.
    6. Juan F. Jimeno, 2019. "Fewer babies and more robots: economic growth in a new era of demographic and technological changes," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 93-114, June.
    7. Kim, Myunghyun & Song, Sang-yoon, 2022. "The effects of monetary policy on consumption: Workers vs. retirees," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    8. Momo Komatsu & David Murakami & Ivan Shchapov, 2025. "Productivity over the life-cycle and its effect on the interest rate," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 76(2), pages 429-461, April.
    9. Sandra Daudignon & Oreste Tristani, 2022. "Monetary policy and the drifting natural rate of interest," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 22/1057, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    10. Federico Barbiellini Amidei & Matteo Gomellini & Paolo Piselli, 2018. "The contribution of demography to Italy's economic growth: a two-hundred-year-long story," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 431, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    11. Mathilde Esposito, 2024. "Workforce Aging and Potential Output Growth," Working Papers hal-04747557, HAL.
    12. Heo, Ye Jin, 2022. "Population aging and house prices: Who are we calling old?," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 23(C).
    13. Ciccarelli, Matteo & Osbat, Chiara, 2017. "Low inflation in the euro area: Causes and consequences," Occasional Paper Series 181, European Central Bank.
    14. Siyan Chen & Saul Desiderio, 2023. "An agent-based framework for the analysis of the macroeconomic effects of population aging," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 393-427, April.
    15. Bonchi, Jacopo & Caracciolo, Giacomo, 2025. "Declining r∗ in the US: The role of Social Security," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 241(C).
    16. Jacopo Bonchi & Giacomo Caracciolo, 2021. "Declining natural interest rate in the US: the pension system matters," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1317, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    17. Luis Bauluz & Filip Novokmet & Moritz Schularick, 2022. "The Anatomy of the Global Saving Glut," Working Papers halshs-03693216, HAL.
    18. Andrea Modena & Luca Regis & Giorgio Rizzini, 2025. "The Equilibrium Effects of Mortality Risk," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2025_709, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    19. Patrik Kupkovic, 2020. "R-star in Transition Economies: Evidence from Slovakia," Working and Discussion Papers WP 3/2020, Research Department, National Bank of Slovakia.
    20. Julian Kozlowski & Laura Veldkamp & Venky Venkateswaran, 2019. "The Tail That Keeps the Riskless Rate Low," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(1), pages 253-283.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedfel:00142. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbsfus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.