ASYMPTOTIC AGE STRUCTURES AND INTERGENERATIONAL TRADE

摘要

While Lotka and Lopez proposed conditions on (exogenous) fertility and mortality laws under which populations with distinct initial age structures exhibit the same asymptotic age structure, this paper re-examines age-structure stabilization and convergence by considering a three-period overlapping generations model where fertility and longevity are determined by human capital accumulation and by intergenerational trade. It is shown that the age structure must converge asymptotically towards a stable structure, and that populations with distinct initial age structures end up with the same long-run age structure when fertility and mortality laws are converging, which requires converging intergenera-tional terms of trade.