Toward a Concept of "Population Balance" Considering Age-Structure, Human Capital, and Intergenerational Equity

This paper is a first step in trying to develop a concept incorporating population growth and population aging concerns under one analytical umbrella. Our approach is to try to achieve this through explicitly considering age structural changes through the analysis of age-specific growth rates and the new measure of Cohort Succession Ratios (CSR), which is introduced in this paper. In order to also address the issue of intergenerational equity on both the population aging and the sustainable development concerns, additional emphasis is put on human capital formation as measured by educational attainment as a proxy for productivity. Since age-, sex- and education-specific analysis can readily be carried out in a multi-state population projection context, this approach presents a feasible and operational strategy to work towards the goal of such a more general framework tentatively entitled "population balance."
The paper first discusses the political need for such a more general concept, and then works towards its operational definition through analytical and empirical considerations and the development of a simple simulation model considering age-, cohort- and education-specific productivity and income.

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