Cities of Workers, Children, or Seniors? Age Structure and Economic Growth in a Global Cross-Section of Cities
A large literature documents the positive influence of a city's skill structure on its rate of economic growth. By contrast, the effect of a city's age structure on its economic growth has been a hitherto largely neglected area of researc...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/836441571143681111/Cities-of-Workers-Children-or-Seniors-Age-Structure-and-Economic-Growth-in-a-Global-Cross-Section-of-Cities http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32585 |
| Summary: | A large literature documents the
positive influence of a city's skill structure on its
rate of economic growth. By contrast, the effect of a
city's age structure on its economic growth has been a
hitherto largely neglected area of research. This paper
hypothesizes that cities with more working-age adults are
likely to grow faster than cities with more children or
seniors. The paper sets out the potential channels through
which such differential growth may occur. Using data from a
variety of historical and contemporary sources, it shows
that there exists marked variation in the age structure of
the world's largest cities, across cities and over
time. It then studies how age structure affects economic
growth for a global cross-section of mega-cities. Using
various identification strategies, the analysis finds that
mega-cities with higher dependency ratios, that is, with
more children and/or seniors per working-age adult, grow
significantly slower. Such effects are particularly
pronounced for cities with high shares of children. This
result appears to be driven mainly by the direct, negative
effects of a higher dependency ratio on the size of the
working-age population and the indirect effects on work
hours and productivity for working-age adults within a city. |
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