The Global Macroeconomic Consequences of a Demographic Transition^*

The world is in the midst of a significant demographic transition with potential implications for the macroeconomic performance of the global economy. This paper summarizes the key features of current and projected demographic change. It then applies a new 10-region global model (an extended version of the MSG-Cubed model) incorporating demographic dynamics, to examine the consequences of projected global demographic change on the world economy from 2005 to 2050. A distinction is made between the effects on each country of its own demographic transition and the effects on each country of demographic changes occurring in the rest of the world.