This should be classified as “playing with numbers” rather than serious economic analysis, but I found it interesting at least. Basically, following on from Chris’s demographics post earlier in the week, I thought I’d follow up an idea I’ve had for a while and carry out some “financially adjusted demographics”. The idea is quite simple; there’s two ways in which you can add to a country’s effective labour power:
1. Increase the population
2. Acquire overseas assets, effectively giving you a claim on the population of other countries.
It’s always struck me that demographic analyses (particularly those carried out by people looking at pensions issues) tend to fixate on the first and ignore the second. Turns out that it doesn’t make a huge difference to the numbers, but it does make a difference.