1887

OECD Working Papers on Fiscal Federalism

This series covers issues related to intergovernmental fiscal relations and local/regional public finance, such as: tax and spending assignment across government levels; intergovernmental grants; fiscal equalization; local and regional public service efficiency; inter-jurisdictional tax competition; and macroeconomic issues such as intergovernmental fiscal management and sub-central fiscal rules. Many of these working papers are outputs of the OECD Network on Fiscal Relations Across Levels of Government. Related working papers on fiscal federalism issues are also published in other OECD working paper series on tax policy, economics, public governance and regional development. An integrated list of key papers produced by the Fiscal Network can be found at http://oe.cd/fiscalnetwork.

(Note: numbers 1, 6 and 8 are available in the OECD Economics Department Working Papers, as numbers 465, 626 and 705.)

English

Funding the future

The impact of population ageing on revenues across levels of government

Government revenues may be affected by economic growth and changes in demographics over time. The effect of economic growth can be captured by long-run buoyancy – responsiveness of government revenues to GDP growth – while the demographic effect can be captured by changes in labour income, asset income and consumption patterns over the life cycle, as well as population growth. This paper attempts to quantify the effect of population ageing on OECD tax revenues across different levels of government, by estimating error correction models of revenue buoyancies over the 1990 to 2018 period, by type of revenue, country and level of government. Multiple scenarios are used for the projections to 2040, which are combined with scenarios for the evolution of revenue bases using newly harmonized EU and UN National Transfer Accounts data as well as OECD Population Projections.

English

Keywords: fiscal federalism, tax policy, revenue buoyancy, intergovernmental relations, demographics
JEL: J11: Labor and Demographic Economics / Demographic Economics / Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts; H71: Public Economics / State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations / State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue; H20: Public Economics / Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue / Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue: General
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