Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/56509 
Year of Publication: 
2010
Series/Report no.: 
MAGKS Joint Discussion Paper Series in Economics No. 18-2010
Publisher: 
Philipps-University Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Marburg
Abstract: 
This paper analyzes how population aging affects immigration policy in rich industrialized countries. It sets up a two-period model of a representative democracy with two overlapping generations. The government's preferred immigration rate increases with the share of retirees in the population. The paper differentiates between an economy without a pension system and one with pay-as-you-go pensions. As immigrants have more children than natives, the chosen immigration rate is contingent on the design of the pension system. If pension contributions and benefits are set freely by the government, equilibrium immigration is lower than it is in the absence of a pension system. On the contrary, it is higher if the pension level is fixed ex ante to a relatively generous level, since native workers then benefit from sharing the burden of pension contributions with the immigrants.
Subjects: 
demographic change
political economy
immigration policy
JEL: 
J1
D78
F22
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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