Are the Wise Also Wizened? Population Aging and Knowledge Production

Traditional theories posit a line of causality running from technological change into mortality decline. I argue that an important line runs in the opposite direction: longer life spans contribute to increased knowledge production. The productivity of scientists declines only gradually with age, which implies that a reduction in adult mortality will stimulate knowledge production by leaving more productive scientists alive. It is true that growth in empirical scientific knowledge in the 17th century preceded widespread mortality decline in the 19th century. But the vital statistics of members of the Royal Society of London indicate that the life spans of scientists were increasing at the same time that scientific knowledge began to grow rapidly, the latter fostered by the Society itself. These perspectives imply that population aging in industrialized countries may not be so costly because it can stimulate knowledge production. Reductions in adult mortality in developing countries may foster expanded knowledge production and thus contribute to economic growth. ∗Postdoctoral Scholar in the Study of Aging, RAND Corporation, [email protected]. PRELIMINARY. Please do not cite or quote without permission. Prepared for the December 2004 Symposium on Population Ageing and Economic Growth hosted by the Vienna Institute of Demography and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. The author wishes to thank Ronald Lee, Shripad Tuljapurkar, and seminar participants at RAND and the Vienna Institute of Demography for helpful comments. This research was supported by NIA grant T32 AG000244.