Welcome to the 7th issue of the NTA Newsletter!

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Meetings

Meeting of the Working Group on Macroeconomic Aspects of Intergenerational Transfers



The ninth global NTA meeting will take place at the University of Barcelona Faculty of Economics, from June 3rd to June 8th, 2013. The meeting will be composed of an international conference (3-4 June) and a workshop (5-8 June). The workshop will be structured in two parallel tracks for training and discussion and working groups. Authors are invited to submit papers to be presented at the conference. Deadline for abstracts is March 31st. Submissions must consist of a single PDF file sent to: congress.ntabarcelona@ub.edu. For more details, please see the workshop website.

Projects

Gates Foundation Project in Africa

NTA has received funding from the Gates Institute to provide NTA-related research on African member countries (Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa). The NTA project will provide detailed country-specific data to assess the current situation in each country, compare each country to benchmarks based on the experience of other countries, identify specific features of the country that will affect the potential for realizing and using the demographic dividend, and suggest policies that would improve the development benefits of fertility decline.

All activities for this project are to be completed by August 31, 2013. NTA members will participate in the March 2013 Joint Conference for Ministers of Finance, Economic Planning and Development, arranged through the co-sponsors, the Economic Commission for Africa and the African Union with support from the Gates Institute.

Publications

NTA book update

Population Aging and the Generational Economy was selected as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2012 by Choice Magazine, widely used by academic librarians in the US. The awards are chosen based on the best reviewed titles during 2012. The book was also featured in an exhibit of the Outstanding Academic Title winners at the American Library Association’s Mid-winter Conference in January 2013.
The book was also recently published in a paperback edition at a much more affordable price than the hardcover edition. It is still downloadable for free from the IDRC website.

New Bulletin and Brochure

The NTA Bulletin #5 titled "Lower-income countries and the demographic dividend" is now published. It is downloadable from the home page of the NTA website. There is also an updated edition of the NTA brochure. Hard copies of all bulletins and the brochure are available to members who request them for meetings and events (subject to funding). Please contact contact@ntaccounts.org if you would like to request hard copies.

Working Papers series on the NTA website

Members are encouraged to post their working papers on the website, with subject matters that include NTA-related conceptual issues, methodological issues, and applications. Although the expectation is that working papers will eventually be published, preliminary drafts of papers are welcome. To upload the paper, log into the NTA website, and navigate to Publications, and then Working Papers. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click "edit". When you upload to the Working Papers page, use the next available Working Paper number and follow the format used for the Working Papers webpage. The file name should use the names or initials of the authors and the year (add a, b, c, etc. if you have more than one) to distinguish it from other documents in the database. If you have a new draft, you can update it on the website at any time (note that only the most recent draft should be included in the Working Paper series).

Most recent working papers featured:
Andrew Mason and Ronald Lee. 2012. Demographic Dividends and Aging in Lower-Income Countries.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to explore the economic implications of changing demographic conditions in lower-income countries. This is done in a comparative way by contrasting lower-income countries with each other and with upper-middle- and high-income countries. The importance of the demographic dividend varies much more in lower-income countries than in upper-middle or high-income countries because of differences in the speed and timing of fertility decline and because of variation in the economic life cycle. Of particular concern is low labor income of young adults in Africa as compared with their counterparts in Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean. The quantity-quality tradeoff is important in lower-income countries and will facilitate a second demographic dividend. Human capital spending, however, is not increasing with fertility decline as rapidly as suggested by cross-sectional data. Although aging may appear to be a relatively remote prospect for lower-income countries, all countries need to address the needs of their older populations by developing sustainable public programs that balance the need for development and economic security for the elderly.

Holger Bonin and Concepcio Patxot. 2008. Cyclically Neutral Generational Accounting
Abstract: The paper introduces a key methodological innovation into generational accounting. By incorporating cyclically adjusted balances into the forward-looking budget projections underlying the concept we isolate pure policy effects, which render comparisons across time and countries of the fiscal sustainability indicators obtained truly meaningful. We also show that a demographic effect and a debt effect may drive fiscal sustainability measures over time and establish a routine to control for these effects in the generational accounting framework. An empirical application for Spain illustrates that our proposed decomposition of indicators is empirically relevant. Standard generational accounting suggests that fiscal sustainability in Spain has improved substantially in preparing for the EMU. However, calculation of the pure policy effects reveals that this actually has not been the case.

Published Papers featured on the NTA website

Published Papers should also be uploaded to the website for the information of other NTA researchers (this section of the site is closed to the public for copyright reasons).

Most recent published papers featured:

Narayana, M.R. 2012. Impact of Population Ageing on India's Public Finance. Asian Population Studies.

Ladusingh, Laishram. 2012. Lifecycle Deficit, Intergenerational Public and Familial Support System in India. Asian Population Studies.

Dramani, Latif and Fahd Ndiaye. 2012. Estimating the First Demographic Dividend in Senegal: The National Transfers Account Approach. British Journal of Economics, Management & Trade.

Sánchez Romero, Miguel, Concepció Patxot, Elisenda Rentería and Guadalupe Souto, 2012. On the effects of Public and Private Transfers on Capital Accumulation: Some Lessons from NTA Aggregates. Journal of Population Economics.

Patxot, Concepció, Elisenda Rentería, Miguel Sánchez Romero and Guadalupe Souto, 2012. Measuring the balance of government intervention on forward and backward family transfers using NTA estimates: The modified Lee Arrows. International Tax and Public Finance.

Narayana, M.R. 2011. Lifecycle Deficit and Public Age Reallocations for India's Elderly Population: Evidence and Implications Based on National Transfer Accounts. Journal of Population Ageing.

Patxot, Concepció, Elisenda Rentería, Miguel Sánchez Romero and Guadalupe Souto, 2011. Integrated results for GA and NTA for Spain: some implications for the sustainability of welfare state. Moneda y Crédito, n. 231, 7-52. Fundación Banco Santander, Madrid.

Lee, Sang-Hyop and Andrew Mason. 2011. International Migration, Population Age Structure and Economic Growth in Asia. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal.

Narayana, M.R. 2011. Lifecycle deficit and public age reallocations for India's elderly population: evidence and implications based on National Transfer Accounts. Journal of Population Aging.

link to Working Papers
link to Published Papers

NTA news

New Regional Coordinators

Olu Ajakaiye has joined Germano Mwabu and Adedoyin Soyibo as an Africa Regional Coordinator, and the Africa Regional Headquarters has moved to KIPPRA (Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis).
Dr. Sang-Hyop Lee is the new Regional Coordinator for the Asia region, with the East West Center serving as the new Asia Regional Center. We thank Dr. Naohiro Ogawa and NUPRI (Nihon University Population Research Institute) staff for their excellent work and support during the last several years. Although Dr. Ogawa and the NUPRI team no longer serve as Asia regional coordinators, they will still be very important parts of the NTA project.

Welcome to new members

The NTA team now includes new country teams from Vietnam, Turkey, France, El Salvador, Cambodia, and Poland. We welcome them and look forward to their contributions.

Cambodia

San, Sy Than
Tuon, Thavrak
Hang, Lina
Theng, Pagnathun
Poch, Sovanndy
Nor, Vanndy
Khim Fadane
Yim, Saonith
Keo, Bun Chhav

El Salvador

Córdova Macías, Ricardo
Rivera Sarmiento, María Elena
Peña, Werner

France

d'Albis, Hippolyte
Bonnet, Carole
Stancanelli, Elena
Wolff, Francois-Charles

Poland

Irena Elżbieta Kotowska
Agnieszka Chłoń-Domińczak
Strzelecki Paweł Andrzej
Anita Abramowska-Kmon

Turkey

Seckin, Aylin
Sahanogullari, Nazli
Georges, Patrick

Vietnam

Huong, Nguyen Lan
Long, Giang Thanh



Sad News - Thomas Lindh


The NTA Team has lost a member on January 16th, 2013. Thomas Lindh was a member of the Swedish Team at the Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm, Sweden, and the Regional Coordinator for the European NTA project. Many of us got to know him as a wonderful researcher, colleague, and friend, and will dearly miss him in all of those aspects.