Vintage Human Capital, Demographic Trends, and Endogenous Growth
We study how economic growth is affected by demographics in an overlapping generations model with a realistic survival law. Individuals optimally chose the dates at which they leave school to enter the labor market and at which they retire. Endogenous growth arises thanks to the accumulation of generation-specific human capital. Favorable shifts in the survival probabilities always induce longer schooling and later retirement but have an ambiguous effect on growth. The relationship between the growth of population and per-capita growth is hump-shaped. Increases in longevity can be responsible for a switch from a no-growth regime to a sustained growth regime and for a positive relationship between fertility and growth to vanish.