The Cost of Low Fertility in Europe

David E. Bloom, David Canning, Günther Fink, Jocelyn E. Finlay

NBER Working Paper No. 14820
Issued in March 2009
NBER Program(s):Economics of Aging

We analyze the effect of fertility on income per capita with a particular focus on the experience of Europe. For European countries with below-replacement fertility, the cost of continued low fertility will only be observed in the long run. We show that in the short run, a fall in the fertility rate will lower the youth dependency ratio and increase the working-age share, thus raising income per capita. In the long run, however, the burden of old-age dependency dominates the youth dependency decline, and continued low fertility will lead to small working-age shares in the absence of large migration inflows. We show that the currently very high working-age shares generated by the recent declines in fertility and migration inflows are not sustainable, and that significant drops in the relative size of the working-age population should be expected. Without substantial adjustments in labor force participation or migration policies, the potential negative repercussions on the European economy are large.

A non-technical summary of this paper is available in the July 2009 NBER Digest.  You can sign up to receive the NBER Digest by email.

Acknowledgments

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w14820

Published: European Journal of Population / Revue européenne de Démographie May 2010, Volume 26, Issue 2, pp 141-158 The Cost of Low Fertility in Europe David E. Bloom, David Canning, Günther Fink, Jocelyn E. Finlay

Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded* these: