THE AGEING AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE IN OECD COUNTRIES

The changes in age distribution of society should affect economic performance in many countries. There are three main channels through which population ageing might influence long term economic growth: the size of the workforce, amount of savings and labour productivity. The pessimists argue that ageing leads to decline of both savings and firm's investment, slower capital accumulation and lower productivity. The optimistic view refers to changes of individual saving schemes and longer working life. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the effects of ageing on economic performance. We analyse how the ongoing changes in age structure of population can affect selected determinants of the long term economic growth in OECD countries. On the basis of short literature review we try to describe theoretical relationship between the ageing and long term economic growth. The quantitative analysis could help to verify the importance of the ageing for prosperity. In general, the effects of demographic changes on economic output are ambiguous. Population ageing can harm accumulation of physical capital but the effect on productivity is doubtful. Thus, the adverse effects resulting from national accounting might be compensated by productivity increase.