Longer lives and fertility far below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman are leading to rapid population aging in many countries. Many observers are concerned that aging will adversely affect public finances and standards of living. Analysis of newly available National Transfer Accounts data for 40 countries shows that fertility well above replacement would typically be most beneficial for government budgets. However, fertility near replacement would be most beneficial for standards of living when the analysis includes the effects of age structure on families as well as governments. And fertility below replacement would maximize per capita consumption when the cost of providing capital for a growing labor force is taken into account. While low fertility will indeed challenge government programs and very low fertility undermines living standards, we find that moderately low fertility and population decline favor the broader material standard of living

Only 29% of the elderly population studied had a previous psychiatric diagnosis, so the detection of mental problems in old age is low in Primary Care. When Family Doctors are trained in psychogeriatric screening instruments, detection and sensitivity in the recognition of these important health problems increases. Greater training in psychogeriatric assessment is required in Primary Care.

This paper uses pseudo panel techniques and a fixed effects estimator to analyse the determinants of preferences for redistribution in 34 European countries over the period [2002][2003][2004][2005][2006][2007][2008][2009][2010][2011][2012]. The data is drawn from the six available waves of the European Social Survey. The main result is that changes in income inequality positively affect changes in preferences for redistribution over time. Though this result is predicted by standard political economy models, it has found little previous empirical support. This study shows that, at least in Europe, growing income inequality leads to more individual support for redistribution. The empirical results hold after performing a variety of robustness checks regarding the construction of pseudo panels, the use of lags and different measures of income inequality.

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