IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/07-187.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Ensuring Fiscal Sustainability in G-7 Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Leigh
  • David Hauner
  • Michael Skaarup

Abstract

Rising longevity, falling fertility rates, and the retirement of the baby boom generation will substantially raise age-related government spending in most advanced and many emerging market countries. This paper assesses the evolution of fiscal sustainability for each of the G-7 countries using two standard primary gap indicators. The estimated fiscal adjustment required to ensure long-run fiscal sustainability is substantial for all G-7 countries. In particular, ensuring fiscal sustainability would require an average improvement in the primary balance of about 4 percentage points of GDP. While the overall adjustment required to achieve long-run fiscal sustainability in G-7 countries is large, there are significant growth benefits to putting public finances on a sustainable footing in the near term versus delayed adjustment.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Leigh & David Hauner & Michael Skaarup, 2007. "Ensuring Fiscal Sustainability in G-7 Countries," IMF Working Papers 07/187, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:07/187
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=21100
    Download Restriction: no

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Bevan, David L., 2012. "Aid, Fiscal Policy, Climate Change, and Growth," WIDER Working Paper Series 077, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Martin Werding & Stuart R. McLennan, 2015. "International Portability of Health-Cost Cover: Mobility, Insurance, and Redistribution," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo, vol. 61(2), pages 484-519.
    3. Nicolas Afflatet, 2016. "The impact of population ageing on public debt. A panel analysis for eighteen european countries," Working Papers 1615, University of Strathclyde Business School, Department of Economics.
    4. repec:unu:wpaper:wp2012-77 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Volker Meier & Martin Werding, 2010. "Ageing and the welfare state: securing sustainability," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 26(4), pages 655-673, Winter.
    6. Murtaza H Syed & Michael Skaarup & Tarhan Feyzioglu, 2008. "Addressing Korea’s Long-Term Fiscal Challenges," IMF Working Papers 08/27, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Paolo Biraschi & Lorenzo Codogno & Federico Giammusso & Manuela Nenna & Juan Pradelli, "undated". "Are Italy's public finances sustainable? The role of demographics, productivity, and labour markets," Working Papers wp2008-6, Department of the Treasury, Ministry of the Economy and of Finance.
    8. Grech, Aaron George, 2012. "Evaluating the possible impact of pension reforms onfuture living standards in Europe," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 51296, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Werding, Martin & McLennan, Stuart, 2011. "International portability of health-cost coverage : concepts and experience," Social Protection and Labor Policy and Technical Notes 63929, The World Bank.
    10. Andersen, Torben M, 2008. "Fiscal Sustainability and Demographics - Should We Save or Work More?," CEPR Discussion Papers 7044, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Andersen, Torben M., 2012. "Fiscal sustainability and demographics – Should we save or work more?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 264-280.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Aging; Economic models; Government expenditures; Group of seven; Fiscal sustainability; Fiscal policy; general equilibrium models; pension; public debt; health care; Genenral Equilibrium Models;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:imf:imfwpa:07/187. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Jim Beardow) or (Hassan Zaidi). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    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.

    We have no references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.