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Project Leader: Vegard Skirbekk
Core Team: Valeria Bordone Marcin Stonawski Suchitra Subramanian Daniela Weber
Key Collaborators: Bilal Barakat, Caroline Berghammer, Setsuya Fukuda, Alexia Fürnkranz-Prskawetz, Laura Romeu Gordo, Anne Goujon, Melissa Hardy, Samir KC, Elke Loichinger, Michaela Potancoková,Kjetil Telle, Emma Terama, Muhammad Asif Wazir, Jovan Zamac

Introduction

The central research theme of the Age and Cohort Change (ACC) project is the projection of social and economic change (skills, productivity, attitudes and beliefs) in Europe over the coming decades. The five-year project received 1 million euro funding through ERC "European Starting Independent Researcher Grant".

The ACC project focuses on two major topics: human capital, skills and work performance; and beliefs and attitudes. Understanding age variation in productivity and how to improve senior workers skills and capacities are paramount for ageing countries. Ageing and cohort change will also alter values and belief structures, and a better understanding of these changes is necessary to improve one’s capacity to foresee and develop more targeted policies that relate to societal ageing and other demographic change.

Figure 1 gives an example of how we might project the degree of European identity in Europe until 2030. Both cohort and age effects are estimated and projected. Based on the Eurobarometer surveys 1996-2004 (for EU 15), and the question: “Do you see yourself as Nationality only as opposed to …, as Nationality and European, as European and Nationality or European only?”, we focused on changes in the population share with some degree of European identity. Our conclusion is that as older, more nationally oriented cohorts die, there are likely to be significant changes in the pattern of European identity. Although the politics of European integration remain volatile and unpredictable, these long-term tectonic shifts in identity are likely to have major and enduring consequences for the future of Europe.

Figure 1. Proportion with some degree of European identity (as opposed to only national identity), 1996-2030
Sourse: Lutz, W., Kritzinger S., and V. Skirbekk, Science 20, Oct 2006.

Unlike long-term projections of economic growth or energy use, demographic forecasts tend to have relatively low error margins, even for forecasts several decades ahead. Traits that change systematically along cohort lines and as a function of age can therefore be projected with comparatively low error margins. Our projections incorporate migration flows, which affect the population distribution of skills and beliefs depending on the migrant’s characteristics in these dimensions. We also consider the effect of fertility differences, combined with the intergenerational transmission of the traits of interest.

These projections are likely to substantially improve our ability to foresee important changes, which in turn can allow us to improve policies. It is expected that viewed together, such analyses will result in significant new insights about likely social and economic challenges associated with ageing and demographic change in Europe and the appropriate policies for coping with them.

Responsible for this page: Suchitra Subramanian
Last updated: 05 Sep 2011