IntroductionThe shape of the demographic life cycle is of fundamental interest, which demographers recognize through extensive efforts to estimate, describe and interpret the age-shapes of fertility, mortality, marriage, divorce, and migration. These age-shapes are influenced by biology, culture, economic constraints and individual choice. Similarly, the shape of the economic life cycle is of fundamental interest in its own right, and this shape is influenced by the same set of factors. Here we will be primarily concerned with the estimation and description of the basic economic life cycle, and some illustrative comparisons of how it differs across countries and over time within countries in recent years.Economic behavior over the life cycle can be summarized by the amount consumed at each age and by the amount produced through labor at each age. One sort of economic dependency occurs when consumption exceeds labor earnings, a condition that marks off periods in childhood and old age. From this point of view, an older person is economically dependent even if she has accumulated claims on output that more than offset her consumption, claims that could take the form of entitlements to transfers or ownership of assets. Often the economic lifecycle is treated in a highly stylized fashion. Dependency ratios and other similar age structure variables, for example, capture only the broadest features of the economic lifecycle, and quadratic functions smooth through important details of the age patterns. Our goal here is to measure it in comprehensive detail. However, we Sources: Figures and Tables France (1996) :
Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptAuthor Manuscript
Author Manuscripthave not attempted to take time use into account, so such important issues as the time spent by parents caring for their children, or time spent caring for elderly relatives, are not covered here.Individual consumption or production by age are seldom calculated, because attention naturally turns toward more disaggregated measures such as wages, labor force participation rates, hours worked, or household expenditures. However, although per capita consumption and production may seem like crude measures, they summarize and incorporate the influences of many factors that may have contradictory or complementary effects on the economic life cycle.Demographic age profiles for fertility and mortality are of interest because they describe a basic aspect of human behavior. But they are also important because they can be applied to a population age distribution to calculate the number of births and deaths occurring in a period. Such a calculation requires the assumption, seldom made explicit, that variations in the population age distribution and in the age profiles of fertility and mortality, are independent. The Easterlin Hypothesis asserts the contrary: that an unusually large age group will experience unusually low fertility. Similarly, an unusually large share of young children in the population might, in some contexts, be expected to cause mortali...
