IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lmu/muenar/19295.html

Gerontocracy revisited: Unilateral transfer to the young may benefit the middle-aged

Author

Listed:
  • Poutvaara, Panu

Abstract

According to conventional wisdom, intergenerational transfers can survive, in the absence of altruism, only if the old are net recipients. I prove that this need not hold in an overlapping generations model with a fixed factor. For example, the middle-aged owning land may gain by providing public education even when they cannot tax the young and when the young face no credit market constraints. This requires that labor is not mobile. Furthermore, establishing public education may benefit only the generation which pays for education twice, first for itself and then for the next generation.

Suggested Citation

  • Poutvaara, Panu, 2004. "Gerontocracy revisited: Unilateral transfer to the young may benefit the middle-aged," Munich Reprints in Economics 19295, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:lmu:muenar:19295
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Marko Köthenbürger & Panu Poutvaara, 2006. "Social Security Reform and Investment in Education: Is There Scope for a Pareto Improvement?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 73(290), pages 299-319, May.
    2. Baskaran, Thushyanthan & Hessami, Zohal & Schirner, Sebastian, 2024. "Young versus old politicians and public spending priorities," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 225(C), pages 88-106.
    3. Gersbach, Hans & Siemers, Lars-H. R., 2010. "Land Reforms And Economic Development," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(4), pages 527-547, September.
    4. Iñigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe & Guadalupe Valera, 2012. "Social security reform and the support for public education," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(2), pages 609-634, January.
    5. Marko Koethenbuerger & Panu Poutvaara, 2009. "Rent taxation and its intertemporal welfare effects in a small open economy," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 16(5), pages 697-709, October.
    6. Gersbach, Hans & Siemers, Lars, 2005. "Can Democracy Educate a Society?," IZA Discussion Papers 1693, IZA Network @ LISER.
    7. Bishnu, Monisankar & Garg, Shresth & Garg, Tishara & Ray, Tridip, 2021. "Optimal intergenerational transfers: Public education and pensions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    8. Andersen, Torben M. & Bhattacharya, Joydeep & Liu, Pan, 2020. "Resolving intergenerational conflict over the environment under the Pareto criterion," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    9. Andersen, Torben M. & Bhattacharya, Joydeep & Liu, Pan, 2018. "A way to resolve intergenerational conflict over the environment under the Pareto criterion using green bonds," ISU General Staff Papers 201808240700001070, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    10. Torben Andersen & Joydeep Bhattacharya, 2020. "Intergenerational Debt Dynamics Without Tears," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 35, pages 192-219, January.
    11. Torben M. Andersen & Joydeep Bhattacharya, 2013. "The Intergenerational Welfare State," CESifo Working Paper Series 4359, CESifo.
    12. Tomohiro Hirano & Alexis Akira Toda, 2025. "Land and Infinite Debt Rollover," Papers 2508.16002, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2025.
    13. Baskaran, Thushyanthan & Hessami, Zohal & Schirner, Sebastian, 2024. "Young versus Old Politicians in Local Politics," IZA Discussion Papers 17009, IZA Network @ LISER.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • C00 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General - - - General
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education

    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:lmu:muenar:19295. 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.

    We have no bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tamilla Benkelberg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.