Life, Death and the Economy: Mortality Change in an Overlapping-Generations Model

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the effects of realistic demographic assumptions on the steady states of overlapping generations general equilibrium models. These models are the workhorse for much economic theorizing about ageing, but traditionally have used simplistic assumptions about mortality, in particular that human death rates are independent of age. Li and Tuljapurkar show that mortality patterns can usefully be discussed in terms of the distribution of age at death and that this distribution is approximately normal in modern humans. They then find and discuss the optimal steady states of three models: a simple model with neither education nor retirement, a model with endogenous schooling and no retirement and, finally, a model with endogenous schooling and an exogenous retirement. They show that both the average age at death, and its variance, matter to the equilibrium properties of the models and that age-independent mortality is a poor approximation. They show that the optimal years of schooling decrease as the exogenous age of retirement increases. This analysis is a fundamental first step in the development of realistic demographic-economic models.