AGENTA, Ageing Europe - An application of national Transfer Accounts for Explaining and Projecting Trends in Public Finances

Ageing Europe: An application of National Transfer Accounts (NTA) for explaining and projecting trends in public finances

Background

The recent economic crisis felt throughout the world has placed focus in Europe clearly on a topic that has been looming on the horizon for some time. The European population is ageing at a rapid rate, and within the next few decades in most countries, the changing ratio between workers and the retired will produce serious difficulties in keeping public finances at a level that maintains the standard of living. While some countries have undergone reforms of their welfare state systems (most prominently their pension systems), the need for further reforms is obvious considering the high levels of public debts in many of the European countries.

The guiding principle of our project is the argument that analysts can adequately explain and project public finances and derive evidence-based options for policy reforms only if they consider the whole system of inter-generational transfers, since these transfers reflect how demographic, social and economic change interact with one another.

Main Objectives

The AGENTA project aims at explaining the past and forecasting the future of taxes and public transfers and services in the light of demographic change in the European Union.

Conceptually AGENTA puts a special emphasis on

• the links between the public and the non-public sector (particularly households) in providing resources in the dependent periods of the life cycle;
• the links between the different components of the public budget (current investments in the health and other human capital of children shape the need for services and the size of the public budget in the future);
• the definition of stages of the life cycle, such as childhood, active age and old age, in particular the age of becoming old, and how they interrelate to impact both economic activity during the life-cycle and the timing of, and circumstances surrounding, the retirement decision.

The acronym of the project, AGENTA, has a double reference. We will use the new method of National Transfer Accounts to analyse the increasing average AGE that constitutes the ageing of European societies. In addition, the output of the project will be strongly policy oriented, offering an AGENDA for preparing for old-age societies.

Fact Sheet

Project Acronym

AGENTA

Full official name

Ageing Europe: An application of National Transfer Accounts (NTA) for explaining and projecting trends in public finances

Grant Agreement

613247 

Funding Scheme

Collaborative Project (CP)

Programme

7th Framework Programme (FP7)

Theme

Socio-Economic Sciences and Humanities

Thematic area

The impact of ageing societies on public finances in Europe

Call identifier

FP7-SSH-2013-2

Duration

48 months (January 2014 – December 2017)

EC Project Officer

Georgios Papanagnou (DG RESEARCH & Innovation)

Coordinator

Alexia Fürnkranz-Prskawetz (OEAW-VID)

Partners

OEAW-VID (Austria), IFFS (Sweden), LUND (Sweden), HDRI (Hungary), UB (Spain), UL (Slovenia), PSE (France), SGH (Poland), NIESR (United Kingdom)