Economic Consequences of Population Aging for Iranian economy :Application of General Equilibrium Overlapping Generations Model

Abstract

Population aging was one of the most important concerns of the last century all over the world. In this study, in order to investigate the effect of demographic changes on some macroeconomic variables, Diamond two-stage overlapping generation model (OLG model) is applied. In this model, we consider an economy inhabited by two-period lived overlapping generations, the length of each period is considered thirty years. From the life cycle perspective, the first period represents working period and the second one is considered as the retirement period. This model consists of three sectors: household, government and production which operate in a competitive market. Simulations indicate that 6 components affect the economic growth: labor supply, savings rate, capital deepening and public investment have positive effects and elder labor supply and tax have negative effects on growth. The component of capital deepening and public investment respectively has the strongest impact on economic growth. The model has some predictions based on the replacement of endogenous growth with exogenous growth. Predictions about endogenous and exogenous growth shows the replacement has negligible impact on the results.

Keywords

• population ageing
• overlapping generation model
• capital deeping
• economic growth