Suchergebnisse

Public intergenerational transfers (IGTs) may emerge from the failure of private arrangements to provide optimal economic resources for the young and old. We investigate the political sustainability of the public system of IGTs by seeking to determine the outcome if the decision to reallocate economic resources per se was put to the vote. Exploiting the particular nature of the data from the National Transfer Accounts and the political economy application of Rangel (2003), we show that most of the developed countries would vote in favor of a joint public education and pension system. Interestingly, political support is strengthened when we account for population ageing.

Public intergenerational transfers (IGTs) may arise because of the failure of private arrangements to provide optimal economic resources for the young and the old. We examine the political sustainability of the system of public IGTs by asking what the outcome would be if the decision per se to reallocate economic resources between generations was put to the vote. By exploiting the particular nature of National Transfer Accounts data – transfers for pensions and education and total public transfers – and the political economy application proposed by Rangel (2003) we show that most developed countries would vote in favor of a joint public education and pension system. Moreover, our results indicate that a system of total public IGTs to the young and elderly would attract substantial political support and, hence, would be politically viable for most countries in the sample

The paper surveys the methodology of generational accounting, a tool for gauging intertemporal imbalance in government finances facing demographic transition. Starting from the fiscal balance rule providing the theoretical background, we review the methods of generational accountants for generating empirical projections of the items building up to the intertemporal government budget. We debate indication of generational redistribution by lifetime expected net tax payments and several indicators for fiscal sustainability found in the literature. Finally, the performance of generational accounts, which ignore behavioral and policy dynamics, is compared with that of generational welfare indicators based on overlapping generations general equilibrium models.

The provision and financing of long-term care (LTC) in Spain has only recently become a policy concern. However, welfare policy reforms show the need to anticipate the effects of a transition from the traditional 'family-based' model of care (78 per cent of Spanish elders who are disabled are treated by their own families) to a modern 'community-based' model. This paper examines the current models of providing and funding long-term care in Spain and on the basis of the empirical evidence evaluates the prospects for the future organisation and funding of the system.

In this paper we examine the effect of the demographic transition on public education, pension spending and the interaction between them. In particular, we investigate the theoretical prediction that the structure of PAYG pension systems, alongside population ageing, offers incentives for the working-age generation to invest in the public education of the young in order to "reap" the benefits of their higher productivity in the future, translated into higher income tax/contributions. The empirical evidence resulting from the application of the fixed effects approach to panel data for OECD countries shows that the increasing share of elderly people has non-linear effects on both retirement and education spending. The former suggests that political pressure to increase benefits turns out to have no effect when the ageing process is strong enough to compromise the fiscal budget and the latter indicates a certain degree of generational conflict. Nevertheless, our results suggest that a positive link arises when examining the connection between education and pensions by using the projected old dependency ratio. A more detailed analysis of total education expenditure shows that only the non-mandatory educational levels benefit from the future population ageing.

La actual situación económica y las perspectivas presupuestarias a largo plazo han suscitado una discusión acerca de la conveniencia de la Ley de Estabilidad Presupuestaria. Este trabajo, empleando contabilidad generacional, evalúa la sostenibilidad de la política fiscal española ampliando el horizonte temporal más allá del ciclo de los negocios, considerando los efectos del ciclo demográfico. Los resultados muestran que, aunque el proceso de consolidación fiscal ha mejorado ostensiblemente la situación financiera de las AA.PP, se sigue trasladando al futuro una deuda implí­cita sustancial ; - The present economic situation and the financial perspectives in the long term have originated a discussion about the convenience of the Spanish law of financial stability (Ley de Estabilidad Presupuestaria). This paper uses the generational accounting methodology in order to evaluate the intertemporal sustainability of the Spanish fiscal policy extending the horizon beyond the business cycle, taking into consideration the effects of the demographic cycle. Our results show that, although the process of fiscal consolidation has greatly improved the financial situation of the government, substantial implicit liabilities are still being translated to future generations

In this paper, we extend the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodology to obtain the age profiles simultaneously disaggregated by gender, education level and family structure. We present the results for four countries (Austria, Spain, Finland and the UK), analysing the roles of these three dimensions in the both inter and intragenerational distribution of resources. We find interesting differences across countries, some of them related to the degree and age direction of the familiarization of different welfare state regimes. Finland excels as the country with the highest level of public transfers, and in particular for the elderly and for parents of working ages. In Austria, public transfers are also generous for children and the elderly, and there are substantial family benefits. In the UK and Spain, public transfers are much lower and family-related allowances are almost insignificant. Consequently, in Spain, private transfers from parents to children are the highest, while in the UK asset reallocations play a significant role in financing elderly consumption. Overall, our analysis provides interesting insights on how gender, redistribution policies and family structure interact with the welfare organization.

This research received institutional support from the Spanish Science and Technology System (Project numbers ECO2015-67999-R MINECO/FEDER, ECO2016-78991-R MINECO/FEDER and CSO2016-77449-R), the Catalan Government Science Network (Project number SGR2014-1257), the XREPP - Xarxa de Referència en R+D+I en Economia i Politiques Publiques (XREPP) of Catalan Government, the Red de excelencia SIMBIEN ECO2015- 71981-REDT, the Agaur grant number FI-DGR 2013, and the European Commission through the VII Framework Programme (AGENTA project, grant agreement no: 613247). Elisenda Renteria acknowledges the support from the sub-program Juan de la Cierva (JdlC-I-2014-21178) from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. ; This paper shows the estimates of National Transfer Accounts (NTA) for Spain in 2006 disaggregated by education level. Overall, our results indicate that, besides age population composition, education level has a big impact on the economic behavior of households and, hence, on the aggregate economy. Educated households tend to participate more and longer in the labor market, to produce more and, consequently, to consume more. As differences in consumption are lower than in labor income, they are able to contribute to the public system with higher taxes and contributions, and they depend less on public transfers over their lifecycle. Therefore, education seems to be crucial to sustain the welfare state in an ageing society.

The impact of population structure on economic growth has been studied in recent decades using different methods to estimate the so‐called demographic dividend. Besides, education has been pointed out as a key factor in economic growth. We propose a decomposition of the demographic dividend, into age and education effects. We illustrate the potentialities of the method, deriving an application to Mexico and Spain over the period 1970‐2100. To that end, we estimate the National Transfer Accounts age profiles by schooling level and apply them to recently available population projections stratified by education level. Our results confirm the role of population age structure in the demographic dividend, but also reveal that education attainment can be even more crucial. Moreover, we find that how both age and education effects finally impact on economic growth depends to a great extent on the specific consumption and labor income age profiles in each country.

The sustainability of the welfare state is in doubt in many developed countries due to drastic population ageing. The extent of the problem and the margin for reforms depend - among other factors - on the size of the ageing process and the size of the public transfer system. The latter has a crucial impact on the extent to which the first demographic dividend previous to the ageing process turns into a second demographic dividend. The contribution of the different factors driving the demographic dividend is, ultimately, an empirical question. In this paper we contribute to the debate, exploding the cross-country comparison potentialities of the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) database. In particular, we introduce different configurations of the welfare state transfers – Sweden, United States and Spain - into a realistic demography Overlapping Generations, OLG, model and simulate its effects on the second demographic dividend.

According to the 2001 Spanish budgetary previsions, the government deficit is about to disappear. We analyse this matter within a generational accounting framework. Accounting for the recent expansive phase of the economic cycle, we find that current fiscal policy is also intertemporally balanced provided that the favourable present employment situation lasts. However, public finances remain under the pressure of the demographic cycle. Therefore, to achieve fiscal sustainability, the surpluses predicted for the next decades need to be accumulated, in order to finance deficits appearing during the baby-boomers? retirement. The improvement of employment has played an important role in this situation. We extend the standard generational accounting methodology incorporating tax and transfer age profiles by employment status. This permits us to analyse the possible intertemporal impact of several future employment developments. In particular, we assess the fiscal effects of an expected future increase in female labour force participation. We show that this trend does not necessarily improve the intertemporal government budget, as social insurance in Spain is not actuarially fair. Finally, we also assess the impact of a decline in unemployment to the natural rate of unemployment.

Altres ajuts: Spanish Science and Technology System (ECO2016-78991-R) (ECO2015-71981-REDT) and (RTI2018- 095799-B-I00), the European Commission (Joint Programming Initiative (JPI), 'More Years Better Lives (2016) (PCIN-2016-151 WELTRANSIM) and the XREPP (Xarxa de Referència en Economia i Polítiques Públiques) of Catalan Government (Spain), Ramon y Cajal Fellowship (RYC-2017-22586) ; The welfare state has been shown to be a powerful, effective mechanism in the fight against poverty and social exclusion. Yet, it retains a surprising bias towards the elderly, as identified in more than one strand of the social sciences literature. We construct the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) for Spain before and after the Great Recession to determine how this bias might have shifted during the crisis. Our results confirm that children have borne the brunt of the economic decline. The rise in unemployment and the fall in wages inevitably led to the impoverishment of families, deprived of adequate social policies to act as a counterbalance. In contrast, the elderly were by far better protected, thanks to the well-established public pension and health care systems. The question arises as to why high-income societies appear to be so averse to old-age poverty while they seemingly accept child poverty almost without flinching.