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The Baby Boomers and the Productivity Slowdown

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  • Guillaume Vandenbroucke

    (Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis)

Abstract

The entry of baby boomers into the labor market in the 1970s slowed growth for physical and human capital per worker because young workers have little of both. Thus, the baby boom could have contributed to the 1970s productivity slowdown. I build and calibrate a model a la Huggett et al. (2011) with exogenous population and TFP to evaluate this theory. The baby boom accounts for 75% of the slowdown in the period 1964-69, 25% in 1970-74 and 2% in 1975-79. The retiring of baby boomers may cause a 2.8pp decline in productivity growth between 2020 and 2040, ceteris paribus.

Suggested Citation

  • Guillaume Vandenbroucke, 2019. "The Baby Boomers and the Productivity Slowdown," 2019 Meeting Papers 621, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed019:621
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    3. Serguei Kaniovski & Thomas Url & Helmut Hofer & Viola Garstenauer, 2021. "A Long-run Macroeconomic Model of the Austrian Economy (A-LMM 2.0). New Results (2021)," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 67377, April.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

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