Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working Paper Series,
Uppsala University, Department of Economics

No 2007:6: Where Should the Elderly Live and Who Should Pay for their Care? A Study in Demographics and Geographical Economics

Thomas Aronsson (), Sören Blomquist () and Luca Micheletto ()
Additional contact information
Thomas Aronsson: Department of Economics, Postal: Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden
Sören Blomquist: Department of Economics, Postal: Uppsala University, P.O. Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Luca Micheletto: Istituto di Scienze Economiche e Statistiche,, Postal: Istituto di Scienze Economiche e Statistiche, Università, degli Studi di Milano, via Festa del Perdono, 7, 20122 Milano, Italy,

Abstract: There is a rich literature analyzing the problems that will arise as the share of elderly and retired in the population increases in the near future. However, the locational decisions among the elderly as well as their implications in terms of taxes/transfers and of allocation of responsibilities for elderly care between the federal and local levels have not received much attention. In this paper we aim at investigating these issues. For this purpose we explore a model where there is a big city and a set of small villages, and where congestion effects and agglomeration forces are at work at the level of the big city. We also assume that the population is divided between two groups of agents, workers and retired, which differ with respect to the degree of mobility. In the first part of the paper we study and characterize the inefficiencies that arise because of individuals’ free location choice in the context of a unitary government. In the second part of the paper we consider a fiscal federalism structure and we investigate the suitable instruments that are needed in order to decentralize the optimal allocation obtained under full centralization.

Keywords: agglomeration effects; congestion; elderly care; fiscal federalism

JEL-codes: D62; H42; H55; H77; J10

22 pages, January 11, 2007

Full text files

FULLTEXT01.pdf PDF-file 

Download statistics

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Ulrika Öjdeby ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

RePEc:hhs:uunewp:2007_006This page generated on 2024-09-13 22:17:37.