Author: Disney, Richard
Title: Can We Afford to Grow Older? A Perspective on the Economics of Aging
Description: Cambridge [MA], MIT Press, (1996). orig.boards. 24x15cm, x,344 pp.. Minor rubbing. VG. dustwrapper. ¶ In 1996, the United States Social Security fund is huge and in trouble. The United Kingdom has experimented with the voluntary contracting out of pensions to the private sector. Chile has privatized its public pension system. Australia has adopted a means-tested public pension system. Japan has the earliest retirement age of any advanced economy; it also has the highest rate of labour force participation by elderly men. "Can We Afford To Grow Older?" provides a comprehensive, up-to-date survey of the implications of population ageing in these and other OECD countries relative to a range of specific interrelated issues - Social Security schemes, employer pensions, educational attainment, wage growth and distribution, economic productivity, consumption, savings, retirement, and health care - all within a framework for modelling and discussing policy. Richard Disney adopts a "life-cycle" view of the world which recognizes that individuals often make plans with a forward-looking perspective across the stages of childhood, the peak of economic productivity, and retirement. He stresses the existence of overlapping generations and the reality of generational transactions (which include tax and transfer systems, bequests and charity to the elderly). And he assumes intertemporal optimization as a useful unifying basis for analyzing social security, private pension schemes, lifetime labour-supply decisions, consumption and saving...." - Publisher's description.

Keywords: American Economic Policy, Demographic, Old Age Pensions, Demography, United States, Agine Aged, Economy Economics, Retirement, Social Security