Since Adam Smith's book, "An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations" was published, many economists has ardently studied economic growth. Among them, A 1995 Nobel Prize laureate Robert Lucas referred economic growth of Korean soci...
Since Adam Smith's book, "An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations" was published, many economists has ardently studied economic growth. Among them, A 1995 Nobel Prize laureate Robert Lucas referred economic growth of Korean society as a miracle in his article, "Making a Miracle" on Econometrica and pointed human capital as the primary cause. That is, human capital plays an important role in accumulation of the factors of production and in determination of productivity.
In general, the primary causes for economic growth include the factors of production, i.e., physical capital, human capital, technology, and efficiency of the society, and population aging faced by Korea recently is expected to have tremendous effects on the causes. It is because population aging reduces saving rates, which in turn affects economic growth, and raises the demand for social welfare, which places pressure on the budget. In addition, since the increase in the number of elderly people translates into the fall in the labor force participation rate, expenditures on pension and health insurance increases while the rate of increase in the number of members who pays the fee falls, the pension sustainability and budget balance will deteriorate or the amount of annuity will skyrocket.
In this thesis, I designed a overlapping generations model where technological improvement is determined exogenously based on the models in Auerbach and Kotlikoff(1987), Shin and Choi(2008, 2009, 2010), and Chang and Kim (2006, 2007, 2008). From the model, I analyzed the expected changes in economic growth by considering macroeconomic effects and public pension from population aging.
The simulation results present that the effect of population aging on economic growth ranges from -1.4% for low variant to -0.6% for middle variant and for 0.0% for high variant. Therefore, the differences in economic growth rates can measure up to 1.4%. Also, economic growth rate for low variant falls to -2.1% in 2055 when the premium is expected to rise by 15% due to the depletion of the fund followed by a temporary recovering period, and then keeps decreasing to -1.2% before it reaches to steady-state. As for middle and high variants, the rates fall to -1.75% and -1.6% relatively, and rise to -0.49% and 0.09% in between the recovery and the steady-state. In short, I have found that population aging cuts back economic growth rates via various routes, such as, a reduction in the labor force participation rate, a reduction in the stock of physical capital for production due to lower saving rates, budget deficit due to annuitization.
As the model forecasts the macroeconomic effects of population aging on Korean society, we must put forth a long-term and multilateral efforts, such as, to encourage aging population, people not in the labor force, and foreign workers to participate in labor market, and to reform the social welfare system. Furthermore, when assumptions of endogenous determination of human capital, small open-economy, and uncertainty are introduced into the overlapping generations model developed to analyze the effects of population aging on economic growth, the model will become more realistic.