Coping with Ageing

Abstract

Coping with ageing: a dynamic approach to quantify the impact of alternative policy options on future labour supply in OECD countriesIn the face of the substantial ageing of population expected to occur in OECD countries over coming decades, policies that boost labour-force participation attract considerable interest.There remain large cross-country divergences in participation rates that are largely accounted for by differences in participation of specific groups, in particular prime-age women, older workers and also youth.This suggests that policies targeting these groups could have important effects.The aim of this paper is to examine whether the potential impact of several policy reforms is able to attenuate or to offset the adverse trend in aggregate participation rates that would otherwise occur because of ageing population.It uses a simple dynamic modelling framework that generates longer-term projections of participation rates and labour supplies in OECD countries and alternative scenarios of policy reforms.The main outcome of this analysis is that the combined effect of possible reforms targeting prime-age women, older workers and youth might suffice to stabilize the average participation rate in OECD countries over the next 25 years but will be insufficient to offset the additional reduction of participation likely to be caused by demographic changes beyond 2025.