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A. Fürnkranz-Prskawetz:
"The Economics of Ageing";
Talk: Alpbacher Technologiegespräche 2011: Plenarveranstaltung "Die Stadt der Zukunft - Demographie und Nachhaltigkeit", Alpbach (invited); 2011-08-25.

Most countries in Europe have experienced an impressive increase in life expectancy accompanied by a rise in the number of healthy life years. To study the economic perspectives of the ageing process we need to differentiate between the process of ageing at the individual level and population ageing, i.e. an increasing share of people at older ages.

At the individual level we observe great heterogeneity of the ageing process by education, work history, family forms, underlying institutional conditions, etc. At the same time a longer, healthy lifespan will affect microeconomic decisions including education, employment, savings, investment and retirement. These decisions themselves will be influenced by the underlying institutional conditions (family, labour, and pension policies, for example), prevailing norms and values, as well as the current economic situation.

At the aggregate level, low fertility and longer lifespans will change the age structure of most industrialised countries. Given current retirement regulations, the share of the working age population will decline while the share of pensioners will increase. The baby boom generation´s retirement from the workforce will further intensify this process. Structural changes in the age distribution of populations will in turn influence the compensation of labour, physical capital and human capital. The economic structure of a country and the possibilities for substitution among production factors will determine the specific economic effects. Depending on the prevailing social security system (including health care, pensions, long-term care insurance) the redistribution of resources between generations will change as well.