Ronald Demos Lee

Edward G. and Nancy S. Jordan Family Professor Emeritus of Economics

Professor Emeritus of Demography

Ronald Lee is a demographer and economist, with a MA in Demography from Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard. Since 1979 he has been at the University of California at Berkeley, currently as a Professor of the Graduate School in Demography and Economics. He is the founding Director of the Center for the Economics and Demography of Aging at Berkeley, now Associate Director. Throughout his career, he has taught economic demography. His current research focuses on the macroeconomic consequences of changing population age distributions and on intergenerational transfers and population aging. For 18 years he co-directed with Andrew Mason the National Transfer Accounts project, which includes collaborating research teams in more than 60 countries, and estimates intergenerational flows of resources through the public and private sectors (NTAccounts.org). He continues to work on modeling and forecasting demographic variables including mortality and on evolutionary biodemography, in particular the role of intergenerational transfers in life history theory. From 2010-2015 he co-chaired a National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Long-run Macroeconomic Effects of the Aging U.S. Population. He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy; he is a former President of the Population Association of America and a Laureate of the international population association, the IUSSP. He holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Lund and Montreal.

Macroeconomic Demography of Intergenerational Transfers

Principal Investigators: Ronald D. Lee (Department of Demography, UC Berkeley)

  • The number of countries in this comparative international project is now at 30, with a likelihood that additional country teams will join in the coming grant year. Various training programs have been held for the new country members.
  • The project has attracted interest and funding support from the United Nations (Population Division and Fund for Population Activities), the World Bank, the European Union, and the government of Japan (through Nihon University Population Research Institute), and the International Development Research Center (a Canadian Foundation). This funding goes through PIs who are regional directors for Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia, rather than through the PI on this NIA grant, Lee. Many countries have their own national funding.
  • There have been many workshops and conferences in the past year, at the national, regional, and global level, often with policy makers attending.
  • In most Third World countries, middle income or poor, consumption is quite flat across adult ages, whereas in most rich industrial nations, consumption rises strongly with age, particularly in old age, reflecting rising public expenditures on health care.
  • In poor countries, the direction of net transfers is strongly downwards from older people to younger people. In many but not all rich countries, the direction of net transfers has shifted to upwards, from younger to older people. Private transfers are uniformly strongly downwards, but public transfers are often strongly upwards.
  • There is great diversity across countries in the way that the elderly finance their old age consumption, through public or private transfers, asset income, or their own labor income. The main substitution appears to be between asset income on the one hand and the total of transfers (public and private) on the other, with the role of labor income less variable.
  • Except in East Asia, the average elderly in most countries make net private transfers to others rather than receiving net transfer support from their adult children.
  • In the US, elders fund their consumption largely from asset income but also from Social Security, while making net transfers to younger people.
  • In the US, in 1960 cross-sectional per capita consumption declined at older ages. By 1981 it increased substantially with age, due largely to rising public
    expenditure on health care for the elderly (Medicare and Medicaid for long term care). By 2003 this increase with age had become very pronounced, again due largely to rising Medicare and Medicaid expenditures.
  • There is a moderately strong negative relationship between national fertility rates and combined public and private spending on education and health care per child from birth to young adulthood. A stylized simulation suggests that as populations age due to low fertility, the increased old age dependency ratios and pension costs may be substantially offset by increased productivity of the smaller labor force, because this increased investment in human capital raises the productivity of labor.

Lee, Ronald. (2011). The Outlook for Population Growth. Science, 333(6042), 569 -573. [Abstract | PDF]

Mason, Andrew and Ronald Lee (2010) Introducing Age into National Accounts NTA working paper, 10-02   July 2010

Lee, Ronald and Andrew Mason (2010). Fertility, human capital, and economic growth over the demographic transition European Journal of Population = Revue Europeenne De Demographie, 26(2), 159-182. PMCID: PMC2860101

Plenary talk on population and economic development at the Marrakech IUSSP meetings, October 2009

Auerbach, Alan J. and Ronald Lee (2009) Welfare and Generational Equity in Sustainable Unfunded Pension Systems NBER working paper, w14682   January 2009

Lee, Ronald (2008) Sociality, Selection and Survival: simulated evolution of mortality with intergenerational transfers and food sharing PNAS. published May 5, 2008, PMCID: PCM2438215 10.1073/pnas.0710234105 (Social Sciences)

Chu, C. Y. Cyrus, Hung-Ken Chien, and Ronald D. Lee (2008) Explaining the Optimality of U-Shaped Age-Specific MortalityTheoretical Population Biology 73:2 (March 2008), 171-180. doi:10.1016/j.tpb.2007.11.005 PMCID: PMC2291574

Robinson RS, Lee RD, Kramer KL (2008) Counting Women’s Labour: A Reanalysis of Children’s Net Production Using Cain’s Data from a Bangladeshi Village. Population Studies (Camb) 2008 Mar;62(1):25-38.  PMCID: PMC2775512

Mason, A. and R. Lee (2006). Reform and support systems for the elderly in developing countries: capturing the second demographic dividend. GENUS LXII(2): 11-35.

Ronald Lee and Richard H. Steckel (2006). Life under Pressure: An Appreciation and Appraisal. (review of  “Life under Pressure: Mortality and Living Standards in Europe and Asia, 1700-1900,  T. Bengtsson, C. Campbell, J. Z. Lee, et al., eds.). Historical Methods, 39:4, Fall 2006, pp. 171-6.

Chu, C.Y. and Ronald Lee (2006) The co-evolution of intergenerational transfers and longevity: an optimal life history approach. Theoretical Population Biology. Volume 69. Issue 2. March 2006. Pp. 193-201. PMCID: PMC1513193

Lee, Ronald, Sang-Hyop Lee and Andrew Mason. Charting the Economic Life Cycle. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 12379. (abstract and link to pdf)

Li, Nan and Ronald Lee (2005) Coherent mortality forecasts for a group of populations: An extension of the Lee-Carter method, Demography. 42:3, August 2005, pp 575-594. PMCID: PMC1356525

Li, Nan, Ronald Lee and Shripad Tuljapurkar (2004) Using the Lee-Carter Method to Forecast Mortality for Populations with Limited Data, International Statistical Review 72:1:19-36.

Lee, Ronald (2004) Reflections on Inverse Projection: Its Origins, Development, Extensions, and Relation to Forecasting, in J. Vaulpel, E. Barbi, S. Bertino, E. Sonnio, eds., Inverse Projection Techniques: Old and New Approaches, from Demographic Research Monographs, a series of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, J. Vaupel, Editor-in-Chief (Springer-Verlag-Berlin).

Lee, Ronald (2004) Quantifying Our Ignorance: Stochastic Forecasts of Population and Public Budgets in L. Waite (ed.) Aging, Health, and Public Policy: Demographic and Economic Perspectives, Supplement to Population and Development Review, v. 30. New York: Population Council, pp. 153-176.

Lee, Ronald (2004) Quantifying Our Ignorance: Stochastic Forecasts of Population and Public Budgets, paper prepared for the Rand Summer Institute Gala Celebration for the NIA Centers for the Demography and Economics of Aging. (Word .doc file)

Lee, Ronald, Timothy Miller, and Michael Anderson (2004) Stochastic infinite horizon forcasts for Social Security and related studies. NBER Working Paper 10917 (.pdf file)

Lee, Ronald (2003) Age Structure and Dependency, in Encyclopedia of Population, Paul Demeny, Geoffrey McNicoll, eds. (New York: Macmillan Reference USA), pp. 542-545.

Lee Ronald D (2003) Rethinking the evolutionary theory of aging: Transfers, not births, shape senescence in social species. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Aug;100(16):9637-9642. PMCID: PMC170970

Lee, Ronald (2003) Interage Transfers, in Encyclopedia of Population, Paul Demeny, Geoffrey McNicoll, eds. (New York: Macmillan Reference USA), pp. 24-28. (.pdf file)

Lee, Ronald, Michael Anderson, and Shripad Tuljapurkar (2003) Stochastic Forecasts of the Social Security Trust Fund a report for the Social Security Administration, January 31, 2003.

Lee, Ronald, Timothy Miller, and Ryan Douglas Edwards (2003) SPECIAL REPORT: The Growth and Aging of California’s Population: Demographic and Fiscal Projections, Characteristics and Service Needs, Technical Assistance Program, California Policy Research Center, University of California. ( .pdf file)

Zhang, Jie, Junsen Zhang, and Ronald Lee (2003) Rising Longevity, Education, Savings, and Growth, Journal of Development Economics 70, pp. 83-101. ( .pdf file)

Lee, Ronald and Hishashi Yamagata (2003) Sustainable Social Security: What Would It Cost?, National Tax Journal, v. 56, n. 1, part 1, pp. 27-43. (Acrobat pdf file)

Ronald Lee (2003) Demographic Change, Welfare, and Intergenerational Transfers: A Global Overview, Genus, v. LIX, No. 3-4, pp. 43-70, July-December 2003. Reprinted (2007) In J. Veron, S. Pennec, & J. Legare (Eds.), Ages, Generations and the Social Contract: The Demographic Challenges Facing the Welfare State (pp. 17-43). Springer.

Ronald Lee (2003) Mortality Forecasts and Linear Life Expectancy Trends, paper prepared for a meeting on mortality forecasts, for the Swedish National Insurance Board, Lund, Sweden, September 4, 2002.

Lee, Ronald, Hillard Kaplan, and Karen Kramer (2002) Children and Elderly in the Economic Life Cycle of the Household: A Comparative Study of Three Groups of Horticulturalists and Hunter-Gatherers, manuscript.

Lee, Ronald, Andrew Mason, and Timothy Miller (2002) Saving, Wealth, and the Transition from Transfers to Individual Responsibility: The cases of Taiwan and the United States, The Swedish Journal of Economics, v. 105, No. 3, pp. 339-357. (.pdf file)

Lee, Ronald (2002) Report for the Roundtable Discussion of the Mortality Assumption for the Social Security Trustees, presentation given in Washington D.C. at the Meeting of the Social Security Trustees on September 13, 2002.

Lee, Ronald (2002) Demographic Change, Welfare, and Intergenerational Transfers: A Global Overview, paper prepared for the Third Rencontres Sauvy, Villa Mondragone, Frascati, Rome, Italy, September 19-21.

Lee, Ronald and Ryan Edwards (2001) The Fiscal Impact of Population Aging in the US: Assessing the Uncertainties, James Poterba, ed., Tax Policy and Economy, v. 16 (NBER: MIT Press, 2002), pp. 141-181. ( .pdf file)

Lee, Ronald (2001) Predicting Human Longevity a letter to the editor of Science, 292:1654-1655 (June 1), in response to Olshansky, Carnes, and Desesquelles “Prespects for Human Longevity. ( .pdf file)

Lee, Ronald and Ryan Edwards (2001) The Fiscal Impact of Population Change in Jane Sneddon Little and Robert K. Triest, eds., Seismic Shifts: The Economic Impact of Demographic Change. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston conference Series No. 46, pp. 220-237. (.pdf file)

Lee, Ronald and Timothy Miller (2001) Evaluating the Performance of the Lee-Carter Approach to Modeling and Forecasting Mortaliy, Demography, v. 38, n. 4 (November, 2001) pp. 537-549.

Lee, Ronald (2001) The Fiscal Impact of Population Aging testimony prepared for the U.S. Senate Budget Meeting, February 7, 2001 in Washington D.C. (.pdf file)

Lee, Ronald and Michael Anderson (2001) Malthus in State Space: Macro Economic-Demographic Relations in English History, 1540 to 1870, Journal of Population Economics, v.15, n.2. pp. 195-220. (.pdf file)

Lee, Ronald (2001) The Decline of Formal and Aggregate Analysis: Demography Abandons Its Core (.pdf file)

Lee, Ronald and Valentine Villa (2000) Population Aging in California, working paper of the California Policy Research Center, University of California.

Lee, Ronald and Shripad Tuljapurkar (2000) Population Forecasting for Fiscal Planning: Issues and Innovations, in Alan Auerbach and Ronald Lee, eds., Demography and Fiscal Policy (Cambridge University Press). ( .pdf)

Lee, Ronald, Andrew Mason, and Timothy Miller (2000) Life Cycle Saving and the Demographic Transition in East Asia, in Andrew Mason, ed., Population Change and Economic Development in East Asia: Challenges Met, Opportunities Seized (Stanford: Stanford University Press), pp. 155-184. (.pdf file)

Life Cycle Saving and the Demographic Transition in East Asia — Graphs (Acrobat .pdf file) by Ronald Lee

Bommier, Antoine and Ronald Lee (2000) Overlapping Generations Models with Realistic Demography Journal of Population Economics, 16:1:135-160.

Lee, Ronald (2000) A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Intergenerational Transfers and the Economic Life Cycle, in Andrew Mason and Georges Tapinos, eds., Sharing the Wealth: Demographic Change and Economic Transfers between Generations (Oxford University Press, Oxford), pp.17-56.

Lee, Ronald and Shridad Tuljapurkar (1997) Death and Taxes: How Longer Life Will Affect Social Security Demography v.34 n.1 (February) pp.67-82.000

Lee, Ronald (1997) History of Demography in the U.S. Since 1945, in Jean-Claude Chasteland and Louis Roussel, eds., Les Contours de la Demographie qu seuil du XXIe Siecle (Istitut National d’Etudes Demographiques, Presses Universitaires de France), pp.31-56.

Lee, Ronald (1984) Age and Economic Growth: Synthesis and Extensions. Manuscript.

Lee, Ronald D. (1982) Correcting Census Age Distributions: Extensions and Applications of the Demeny-Shorter Technique. Program in Population Research Working Paper No. 6. University of California, Berkeley.

Lee, Ronald D. and Rigley S. Schofield (1981) British Population in the eighteenth century, in Roderick Floud and Donald McCloskey, eds., The Economic History of Britain since 1700, volume 1: 1700-1860 (Cambridge University Press), pp. 17-35. Copyright by Social Science Research Council, 1981.

Lee, Ronald (1979) Economic Theories of Fertility and Longrun Fertility Forecasts: A Review and Evaluation Manuscript.

Berkeley Demography