Demographic Change and Fiscal Policy

As public expenditures on health, education and transfer programs increase, demographic change has a growing impact on public expenditures, and the incentives for behavior created by public transfer programs increase as well. The essays in this volume discuss such timely topics as: demographic change and the outlook for Social Security and Medicare in the United States; long-term decision making under uncertainty; the effect of changing family structure on government spending; how the structure of public retirement policies has encouraged early retirement in some countries and not others; the response of local community spending to demographic change; and related topics. Contributors include many of the world's leading public finance economists and economic demographers.