Аннотация:This paper considers some of the analytical linkages between demographic change and aggregate government spending shares, measured as G/GNP.An exploratory empirical analysis is presented which employs international cross section data, and focusses on Western countries in the intermediate phase of economic development.The traditional independent variable (income per capita) is used to evaluate "Wagner's Law" -the tendency for government shares to increase with economic development.This model, which represents the primary empirical framework employed in the literature, is then augmented to take account of several demographic explanatory variables: total population size, location (rural-urban), density, and age distribution.When demographic factors are taken into account to explain government expenditure shares, the other elements of "economic development" captured by the income per capita term fall notably in Importance.This striking result contrasts with the usual finding in the literature where increases in per capita income account for most of the increases in the government expenditure share.The relative role of the various individual demographic influences is also surprising.Age distributional changes (e.g. the dependency rate), which are hypothesized by many to be important, turn out to exert a relatively small quantitative impact.The strongest positive demographic force is urbanisation, the influence of which is attenuated by scale-economies associated with increasing total population size and density.
