IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/31914.html

The Wealth of Working Nations

Author

Listed:
  • Jesús Fernández-Villaverde
  • Gustavo Ventura
  • Wen Yao

Abstract

Due to aging populations, the gap between GDP growth per capita and GDP growth per working-age adult (or per hour worked) has widened in many advanced economies. Countries like Japan, which have shown lackluster GDP growth per capita, have performed surprisingly well in terms of GDP growth per working-age adult (or per hour worked). Many advanced economies are also following similar balanced growth paths per working-age adult despite significant differences in the levels of GDP per working-age adult. We calibrate a standard neoclassical growth model to reflect changes in the working-age population for each economy. This model aligns more closely with the data for all the economies in our sample when we match GDP growth per working-age adult rather than when we match GDP growth per capita, the “canonical” calibration target.

Suggested Citation

  • Jesús Fernández-Villaverde & Gustavo Ventura & Wen Yao, 2023. "The Wealth of Working Nations," NBER Working Papers 31914, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31914
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w31914.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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. Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Ventura, Gustavo & Yao, Wen, 2025. "The wealth of working nations," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    2. Mark Budolfson & Michael Geruso & Kevin J. Kuruc & Dean Spears & Sangita Vyas, 2025. "Is Less Really More? Comparing the Climate and Productivity Impacts of a Shrinking Population," NBER Working Papers 33932, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Konysev, Vasilij & Fehrle, Daniel, 2025. "To converge or not to converge: Accounting for the German reunification," VfS Annual Conference 2025 (Cologne): Revival of Industrial Policy 325462, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    4. YiLi Chien & Wenxin Du & Hanno Lustig, 2025. "Japan’s Debt Puzzle: Sovereign Wealth Fund from Borrowed Money," Working Papers 2025-023, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    5. Shirota, Toyoichiro & Tsuchida, Satoshi, 2025. "Aggregate implications of changing industrial trends in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    6. Delalibera, Bruno R. & Pereira, Luciene & Rios, Heron & Serrano-Quintero, Rafael, 2024. "Capital misallocation and economic development in a dynamic open economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    7. Selahattin Imrohoroglu, 2025. "Aging, Population Projections, and Public Pensions," CIGS Working Paper Series 25-018E, The Canon Institute for Global Studies.
    8. Ryoji Ohdoi, 2025. "International asymmetries in population aging and their consequences for the technology gap and global growth," Discussion Paper Series 302, School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University.
    9. Ana Beatriz, 2025. "Effect of Central Bank Interest Rates on Economic Growth in Brazil," International Journal of Economic Policy, CARI Journals Limited, vol. 5(6), pages 52-60.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E20 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • J10 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - General

    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:nbr:nberwo:31914. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.