Aging Issues in the United States and Japan

The population base in both the United States and Japan is growing older and, as those populations age, they provoke heretofore unexamined economic consequences. This cutting-edge, comparative volume, the third in the joint series offered by the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Japan Center for Economic Research, explores those consequences, drawing specific attention to four key areas: incentives for early retirement; savings, wealth, and asset allocation over the life cycle; health care and health care reform; and population projections.

Given the undeniable global importance of the Japanese and U.S. economies, these innovative essays shed welcome new light on the complex correlations between aging and economic behavior. This insightful work not only deepens our understanding of the Japanese and American economic landscapes but, through careful examination of the comparative social and economic data, clarifies the complex relation between aging societies, public policies, and economic outcomes.

The population base in both the United States and Japan is growing older and, as those populations age, they provoke heretofore unexamined economic consequences. This cutting-edge, comparative volume, the third in the joint series offered by the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Japan Center for Economic Research, explores those consequences, drawing specific attention to four key areas: incentives for early retirement; savings, wealth, and asset allocation over the life cycle; health care and health care reform; and population projections.

Given the undeniable global importance of the Japanese and U.S. economies, these innovative essays shed welcome new light on the complex correlations between aging and economic behavior. This insightful work not only deepens our understanding of the Japanese and American economic landscapes but also, through careful examination of the comparative social and economic data, clarifies the complex relation between aging societies, public policies, and economic outcomes.

Seiritsu Ogura teaches at Hosei University and is a member of the Japan Center for Economic Research.

Toshiaki Tachibanaki is a professor of economics in the Institute for Economic Research at Kyoto University.

David A. Wise is the director of the NBER's program on aging and the John F. Stambaugh Professor of Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is the editor or coeditor of thirteen volumes in the NBER series, all published by the University of Chicago Pres