Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T07:41:54.095Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

On the Treatment of Population Ageing in Economic Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2008

William A. Jackson
Affiliation:
Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, York, YOI 5DD, U.K.

Abstract

Population ageing is often thought to have adverse economic consequences, and economics therefore has a responsibility for contributing to an understanding of ageing. This paper discusses the treatment of population ageing in economic theory and argues that mainstream economics is too narrow and restrictive to provide an adequate representation of ageing. An alternative to mainstream economic theory is a more pluralistic view of ageing, drawing from non-neo-classical economic theory and from the theorising of the other social sciences.

Type
Forum
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 van, Praag B., The notion of population economics. Journal of Population Economics, 1 (1988), 516.Google Scholar

2 Becker, G. S., The economic approach to human behaviour. In Elster, J. (ed.), Rational Choice. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1986.Google Scholar

3 Eatwell, J. and Milgate, M., Unemployment and the market mechanism. In Eatwell, J. and Milgate, M. (eds), Keynes's Economics and the Theory of Value and Distribution. Duckworth, London, 1982.Google Scholar

4 Keynes, J. M., Some consequences of a declining population. Eugenics Review, 29 (1937), 1317;Google ScholarPubMedHansen, A. H., Economic progress and declining population growth. American Economic Review, 29 (1939), 115;Google ScholarReddaway, W. B., The Economics of a Declining Population. George Allen and Unwin, London, 1939.Google Scholar

5 Caldwell, B. J., Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the Twentieth Century. Allen and Unwin, London, 1982.Google Scholar

6 Giddens, A., The Constitution of Society. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1984.Google Scholar

7 Smith, R. M., Transfer incomes, risk and security: the roles of the family and the collectivity in recent theories of fertility change. In Coleman, D. and Schofield, R. (eds), The State of Population Theory. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1986; Simons, J., Culture, economy and reproduction in contemporary Europe. In Coleman and Schofield, op. cit.Google Scholar

8 Bond, J. and Coleman, P. (eds), Ageing in Society. Sage, London, 1990.Google Scholar

9 Walker, A., The social creation of poverty and dependency in old age. Journal of Social Policy, 9 (1980), 4975;CrossRefGoogle ScholarTownsend, P., The structured dependence of the elderly: a creation of social policy in the twentieth century. Ageing and Society, 1 (1981), 528;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPhillipson, C., Capitalism and the Construction of Old Age. Macmillan, London, 1982.CrossRefGoogle Scholar