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Can I read Population growth, age structure, and age-specific productivity: Does a uniform age distribution minimize lifetime wages? on EtoBox?
Population growth, age structure, and age-specific productivity: Does a uniform age distribution minimize lifetime wages? by David Lam is a Social Sciences article available to read on EtoBox.
What is Population growth, age structure, and age-specific productivity: Does a uniform age distribution minimize lifetime wages? about?
Motivated by empirical evidence that fluctuations in age structure affect relative wages across age groups, this paper asks whether there is a steady-state age distribution that maximizes the lifetime wages of a representative worker. The paper proves the surprising result that in a pure labor economy with any constant returns technology, a uniform age distribution minimizes lifetime wages. Skewed age distributions, generated by either positive or negative population growth rates, generate unambiguously higher lifetime wages than a stationary population, in spite of possible reductions in per capita output in every period. The presence of non-labor factors complicates, but does not necessarily reverse, this result. The paper relates the beneficial effects of higher rates of population growth on lifetime wages in a pure labor economy with imperfect substitutability across age groups to the benefits of population growth that appear in overlapping-generation consumption loan models with intergenerational transfers.
Who reads Population growth, age structure, and age-specific productivity: Does a uniform age distribution minimize lifetime wages??
It is typically read by researchers, students, and practitioners in Social Sciences.
- Author
- David Lam
- Publisher
- Springer; Springer-Verlag; Springer Verlag; Springer Science and Business Media LLC (ISSN 0933-1433)
- Published
- 1989
- Language
- EN
- Field
- Social Sciences