Old people are holding the economy back

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It's no secret that America's aging Baby Boomer population is muddying the concepts of old age and retirement as the country has known them for decades.

Americans are living and working longer, and domestic birth rates have slowed. This dynamic is effectively throwing off labor force participation metrics, health care expenditures and Social Security's finances. Should ongoing trends continue unabated, the country's youngest workers today are on course to age in the years ahead unlike any prior generation.

And although an economic drag has often been implied by this trend – both within the U.S. and in other developed countries like Germany and Japan – few researchers have attempted to peg an exact number on how much an older population weighs on overall economic output.

But a paper published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research attempts to do just that, estimating that a 10 percent increase in the fraction of Americans that's at least 60 years old slashes national economic output per capita by 5.5 percent.

In other words, as a state's population gets older, its gross domestic product is measurably dragged down.

"Population aging is widely assumed to have detrimental effects on economic growth, yet there is little empirical evidence about the magnitude of its effects," the researchers said in the study. "This paper starts from the observation that many U.S. states have already experienced substantial growth in the size of their older population and much of this growth was predetermined by historical trends in fertility."

The study's authors examined Census data from 1980 to 2010 and found that the country's share of older Americans increased by 16.8 percent over that period, finding that the country's GDP over that 30 year window was "9.2 percent lower than it otherwise would have been absent population aging."

"This dramatic shift in the age structure of the U.S. population ... has the potential to negatively impact the performance of the economy as well as the sustainability of government entitlement programs, and could result in a decline in consumption for the population as a whole," the study said.

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A separate analysis of historical Census data reveals that the median national age in the U.S. ballooned to 37.4 in 2014 from just 30 in 1980. Interestingly, the five states and regions that saw the smallest increase in median age over that 34-year window – the District of Columbia, Utah, California, Kansas and Texas – accounted for about 25 percent of America's GDP in 2014.

The five states that aged the most over that period – Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, West Virginia and Montana – accounted for just 1.6 percent of the country's output.

However, the report stops short of comparing individual states with one another, noting that population age and economic output are not independent variables.

"[E]conomic changes can themselves shape the population age structure by affecting ... patterns of migration and mortality, and thus any association between economic growth and population aging at the state level is unlikely to represent the causal impact of population aging," the study said.

It's been well-documented that the country's labor recovery in the aftermath of the Great Recession has favored larger metropolitan regions while wiping out some job opportunities in more rural parts of the country. The District of Columbia, New York and thriving cities in Texas like Dallas, Houston and Austin offer plenty of opportunities for young, skilled workers that may not otherwise be available in West Virginia or Maine.

On the flip side, though, older Americans may flock to cheaper tax-friendly states like New Hampshire or Montana to retire. These economic differences between states help mold the U.S. population age landscape, but they also make it difficult to compare a state like Texas with a state like Montana, considering how many variables are at play when it comes to population age.

At the national level, though, it's clear that the country's aging populace is a drag on the economy as a whole. Researchers estimate that about one-third of the slowdown is related to "slower labor force growth," suggesting that job opportunities in older states aren't expanding at nearly the same rate as some younger, more economically thriving regions.

Another two-thirds of the economic reduction plays out in "slower growth in the labor productivity of workers," or the amount of product an individual employee pumps out per hour worked.

Productivity has long been considered a missing piece to the country's broader economic growth – as productivity gains often translate into raises for workers. The National Bureau of Economic Research study found that "population aging slows earnings growth across the age distribution," impacting young and old workers alike.

It ultimately suggests that an older America won't be nearly as productive or see nearly the same kind of wage increases that the country would've seen years ago, before decades-old fertility and aging dynamics set in.

And as the country continues to age, the economic drag is expected to only get worse. Between 2010 and 2020, economic growth is expected to be held back by 1.2 percentage points per year due solely to the older population.

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