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.

Ronald Lee (Published On-Line, forthcoming in print) “Population aging and public policy” Chapter 10 in Chong-Bum An, ed., Evidence-Based Policy Analysis: Lessons Learned (Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK) pp.197–224. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/97801

Ronald Lee (Forthcoming) “Chapter 1. Introduction: Background, Theory and Uses of National Inclusion Accounts (NTA by SES)”, for the in-process United Nations Population Division Manual on National Inclusion Accounts.

Ronald Lee (2025) “Economic consequences of population aging in the ESCAP region and the role of intergenerational support”, Asia-Pacific Sustainable Development Journal vol. 32, No. 1 (April):53-76.

Ronald Lee (forthcoming) “Old and new approaches in historical demography and how they help us understand the contemporary world” a chapter in David Reher, Kees Mandemakers and Jan Kok, co-editors Elgar Handbook on Historical Demography

Josh Goldstein and Ronald Lee (2024) “Life Expectancy Reversals in Low Mortality Populations” Population and Development Review. Open Access at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/padr.12619.

Ronald Lee (2024) “Forecasting Population in an Uncertain World: Approaches, New Uses, and Troubling Limitations” Population and Development Review. 50th Anniversary Special Issue, Population Challenges in the 21st Century: Looking Backward, Looking Forward.

Rebecca Sear, Oskar Burger, and Ronald Lee (2024) “Human Evolutionary Demography: Introduction and Rationale” Chapter 1 in Oskar Burger, Ronald Lee, and Rebecca Sear editors (2024), Human Evolutionary Demography, Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. Open access at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0251.

Oskar Burger, Ronald Lee, and Rebecca Sear (2024) “Human Evolutionary Demography: Closing Thoughts” in Oskar Burger, Ronald Lee, and Rebecca Sear editors (2024), Human Evolutionary Demography, Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. Open access at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0251.

Ronald Lee and Carl Boe (2024) “Sociality, Food Sharing, and the Evolution of Life Histories” in Oskar Burger, Ronald Lee, and Rebecca Sear editors (2024), Human Evolutionary Demography, Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. Open access at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0251.

Ronald Lee and Cyrus Chu (2023) “Reproduction and Production in a Social Context: Group Size, Reproductive Skew, and Increasing Returns” Ecology Letters, v26 n2 (Feb) 219-231.

Ronald Lee and Cyrus Chu (2023) “Theoretical perspectives on reproductive aging” in Jean-Michel Gaillard ed. Reproductive Aging and Reproductive Health across the Tree of Life, a special issue of Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution – Behavioral and Evolutionary Ecology. Free access: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2022.934732/full.

Ronald Lee (2023) “Introduction — Early days of the Lee-Carter model”, for a special issue of the International Journal of Forecasting on the Lee-Carter model, edited by Ugofilippo Basellini, Carlo Giovanni Camarda, and Heather Booth. ISSN 0169-2070, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2022.12.009. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169207022001741)

Ronald Lee (2023) “Economic Growth, Intergenerational Transfers, and Population Aging”, chapter in David Bloom, Alfonso Sousa-Poza, and Uwe Sunde eds. The Routledge Handbook on the Economics of Ageing (Routledge – Taylor and Francis).

Andrew Mason, Ronald Lee, and 71 members of the NTA network (2022) “Six Ways Population Change Will Affect the Global Economy” Population and Development Review. 48: 51-73.https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12469.

David McCarthy, James Sefton, Ronald Lee, Joze Sambt, (2022) “Generational Wealth Accounts: Did Public and Private Inter-Generational Transfers Offset Each Other Over the Financial Crisis?”, The Economic Journal, ueac019, https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueac019

Gretchen Donehower, Michael Abrigo, Ronald Lee and Andrew Mason (2021) “How public and private transfers have shaped levels and trends of US economic inequality in recent decades” paper presented at the Population Association of America Annual Meetings.

Ronald Lee and Miguel Sanchez-Romero (2020) “Overview of the Relationship of Heterogeneity in Life Expectancy to Pension Outcomes and Lifetime Income” Chapter 12 in Holzmann, Robert, Edward Palmer, Robert Palacios, and Stefano Sacchi, eds. Progress and Challenges of Nonfinancial Defined Pension Schemes: Addressing Marginalization, Polarization, and the Labor Market (World Bank). Pp. 261-279.

Ronald Lee (2020) “Samuelson’s Contributions to Population Theory and Overlapping Generations in Economics”, Robert Cord, Richard G. Anderson and William A. Barnett eds., Paul Samuelson: Master of Modern Economics, Palgrave, pp. 471-495. IZA Discussion Paper No. 12442. http://ftp.iza.org/dp12442.pdf.

Ronald Lee (2020) “Population Aging and Its Economic Consequences for China” China Population and Development Studies; March 2020, Vol. 3 Issue: 3 p189-217. ISSN 2096-448X China popul. dev. stud. DOI 10.1007/s42379-019-00040-7. Earlier draft with title “Population Aging and Its Economic Consequences for the People’s Republic of China”. ADB East Asia Working Paper Series, n.17 (November). Manila: Asian Development Bank. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42379-019-00040-7. Free view-only link: https://rdcu.be/b3hqT.

Sanchez-Romero, Miguel, Ronald D. Lee and Alexia Prskawetz (2020) “Redistributive Effects of Different Pension Systems When Longevity Varies by Socioeconomic Status”, Journal of the Economics of Ageing 17 (October) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeoa.2020.100259.

Tobias Vogt, Fanny Kluge and Ronald Lee (2020) “International Patterns of Sharing Generosity and Average Length of Life” PNAS (Sept) 117(37) 22793-22799; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1920978117 Free access at https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1920978117.

Josh Goldstein and Ronald Lee (equal contributions) (2020) “Demographic Perspectives on Mortality of Covid-19 and Other Epidemics”, PNAS (published on-line on Aug 20, print version published Sept 8) vol. 117 no. 36 pp.22035–22041. Free download at www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2006392117.

Ronald Lee (2020) “Population aging and the historical development of intergenerational transfer systems” Genus 76:31 https://doi.org/10.1186/s41118-020-00100-8. A free download from that link or from this one: https://rdcu.be/b7wGK.

Andrew Mason, Sang-Hyop Lee, Ronald Lee and Gretchen Donehower (2019) “Macroeconomics and policies in ageing societies” Chapter 16 in David Bloom ed. Live Long and Prosper? The Economics of Ageing Populations A VoxEU.org book, CEPR Press, pp. 124-131.
https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1288/2019/10/2019-10_Bloom_VoxEU-eBook_Live-long-and-prosper_The-economics-of-ageing-populations.pdf

Lee, Ronald (2019) “Population aging and systems of intergenerational transfers” in Population Histories in Context: Past achievements and future directions. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure.

Andrew Mason and Ronald Lee (2018) “Intergenerational Transfers and the Older Population”, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Future Directions for the Demography of Aging: Proceedings of a Workshop.
Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.17226/25064.

Alan Auerbach, Lorenz Kueng, Ronald Lee and Yuri Yatsynovich (2018) “Propagation and Smoothing of Shocks in Alternative Social Security Systems” Journal of Public Economics 164:91-105. An earlier draft appeared in 2013 as NBER Working Paper w19137.

Andrew Mason, Ronald Lee, Diana Stojanovic, Michael Abrigo and Syud Amer Ahmed (2017) “Aging And the changing nature of intergenerational flows: Policy Challenges and responses” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America and Working Paper of the National Transfer Accounts project.

Ronald Lee, David McCarthy, James Sefton, and Jože Sambt (2017) “Full Generational Accounts: What do we give to the next generation?” Population and Development Review 43(4): 695–720.

Ronald Lee and Yi Zhou (2017) “Does Fertility or Mortality Drive Contemporary Population Aging? The Revisionist View Revisited”, Population and Development Review 43(2): 285-301. DOI: 10.1111/padr.12062. ID: PADR12062

Ronald Lee and Andrew Mason (2017) “The Cost of Aging”, Finance and Development March, pp.7-9. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5564373

Andrew Mason, Ronald Lee, Michael Abrigo, and Sang-Hyop Lee (2017) “Support Ratios and Demographic Dividends: Estimates for the World” Technical Paper no.2017/1. Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/technical/TP2017-1.pdf

Alan J. Auerbach, Kerwin K. Charles, Courtney C. Coile, William Gale, Dana Goldman, Ronald Lee, Charles M. Lucas, Peter R. Orszag, Louise M. Sheiner, Bryan Tysinger, David N. Weil, Justin Wolfers and Rebeca Wong (2017) “How the Growing Gap in Life Expectancy May Affect Retirement Benefits and Reforms” The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance – Issues and Practice Special Issue on Pension Financing and Insurance. doi:10.1057/s41288-017-0057-0.

Ronald Lee (2017) “Review of National Academy of Sciences report The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration (2016)”, Population and Development Review. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1728-4457/earlyview.

Ronald Lee and Andrew Mason (2017) “Some Economic Impacts of Changing Population Age Distributions—Capital, Labor and Transfers”, paper for the World Congress of the IUSSP at Cape Town, South Africa, October 29-Nov 4, 2017.

Ronald Lee and Andrew Mason (2016) “Conséquences macroéconomiques du vieillissement de la population” REVUE D’ECONOMIE FINANCIERE – No. 122, Special Issue on Finance and Demography edited by Hippolyte d’Albis, pp.83-101. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5552046.

Ronald Lee (2016) “Macroeconomics, Aging and Growth” Chapter 2 in John Piggott and Alan Woodland, eds., Handbook of the Economics of Population Ageing (Elsevier), pp.59-118. Prepublication version is NBER Working Paper w22310 (June, 2016).

Andrew Mason, Ronald Lee and Jennifer Xue Jiang (2016) “Demographic Dividends, Human Capital, and Saving” Journal of the Economics of Aging. Volume 7, April 2016, Pages 106–122. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4918060/

Ronald Lee, Sang-Hyop Lee, and Andrew Mason (2016) “Introduction” to Journal of Economics of Aging Special Issue on the Demographic Dividend and Population Aging in Asia and the Pacific, v.8 (December), pp.1-4.Ronald Lee and Peter Orszag (2016) “What the Growing Inequality in Life Expectancy by Income Means for Federal Benefits for the Elderly” Communities and Banking, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (Summer). On-line at http://www.bostonfed.org/commdev/c&b/index.htm.

Ronald Lee (2015) “Becker and the Demographic Transition” Journal of Demographic Economics v.81, n.1 pp.67-74.

Ronald Lee (2015) “How Population Aging Affects the Macroeconomy,” in Revaluating Labor Market Dynamics (a symposium sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City at Jackson Hole Wyoming) published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pp.261-283.

Concepció Patxot, Ronald Lee, Andrew Mason (2015) “Introduction” for Special Issue on Exploring the Generational Economy Journal of the Economics of Ageing, pp. 1-6. DOI information: 10.1016/j.jeoa.2015.04.001

Ronald D. Lee (2016) “How large are the effects of population aging on inequality?” Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Volume 13, 2014, p.193b doi: 10.1553/populationyearbook2014s193

Andrew Mason and Ronald Lee (forthcoming) “Economic implications of Population Aging”, Chapter 12 of the Oxford Textbook of Geriatric Medicine.

Lee, Ronald (2015) “Population aging and the changing economic life cycle: a global perspective.” In Cornelius Torp (ed.) Challenges of Aging: Retirement, Pensions, and Intergenerational Justice. Palgrave.

Joshua R. Goldstein and Ronald D. Lee (2014) “How large are the effects of population aging on economic inequality?”, Vienna Yearbook of Population Research (Vol. 12), pp. 193–209.

Ronald Lee (2014) “The Importance of Formal Demography for all Demographers” PAA Affairs Invited Essay (Summer).

Lee, Ronald and Andrew Mason (2014) “National Transfer Accounts: An Overview” National Transfer Accounts and Generational Flows a special issue of Policy in Focus n.30 (December) pp.4-5.

Ronald Lee, Andrew Mason, et al (2014) “Is Low Fertility Really a Problem? Population Aging, Dependency, and Consumption” Science 346, 229-234 DOI: 10.1126/science.1250542

Ronald Lee (2014) “Comment on Yong Cai, Feng Wang, Ding Li, Xiwei Wu, Ke Shen “China’s Age of Abundance: When Might it Run Out” The Journal of the Economics of Ageing JEOA44. DOI 10.1016/j.jeoa.2014.10.004.

Ronald Lee (2014) “Intergenerational Transfers, Social Arrangements, Life Histories, and the Elderly” in Maxine Weinstein and Meredith A. Lane, Eds., Sociality, Hierarchy, Health: Comparative Biodemography: Papers from a Workshop (National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.)

Ronald Lee (2014) “Macroeconomic Consequences of Population Aging in the United States: Overview of a National Academy Report” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings. 104(5): 234-39 DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.5.234

Ronald Lee and Andrew Mason, 2014. “National Transfer Accounts and intergenerational transfers,” in: International Handbook on Ageing and Public Policy, chapter 12, pages 153-164, Edward Elgar Publishing.

Li, Nan, Ronald Lee, and Patrick Gerland (2013) “Extending the Lee-Carter Method to Model the Rotation of Age Patterns of Mortality Decline for Long-Term Projection. Demography. DOI: 10.1007/s13524-013-0232-2. Published online August 1, 2013.

Andrew Mason and Ronald Lee (2013) “Labor and Consumption across the Lifecycle.” Journal of Economics of Aging, v.1, n.1. Published on line July 26, 2013. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212828X13000030

Chu, C. Y. and Ronald D. Lee. (2013) “On the Evolution of Intergenerational Division of Labor, Menopause and Transfers Among Adults and Offspring.” Journal of Theoretical Biology. 332: 171–180. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3763024/

Ronald Lee and Andrew Mason (2013) “Reformulating the Support Ratio to Reflect Asset Income and Transfers” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, April/May 2013, New Orleans.

Lee, Ronald (2012). “Macroeconomic Implications of Demographic Changes: A Global Perspective” by Ronald Lee. Discussion Paper Series 2012-E-11 of the Bank of Japan. http://www.imes.boj.or.jp/research/abstracts/english/12-E-11.html

Lee, Ronald (2012) “Intergenerational transfers, the biological life cycle and human society.” Population and Public Policy: Essays in Honor of Paul Demeny, Supplement to Population and Development Review 38: 23–35. PMC ID: PMC3647612 http://popcouncil.org/pdfs/PDRSupplements/Vol38_PopPublicPolicy/Lee_pp23-35.pdf

Lee, Ronald D. and C.Y. Cyrus Chu (2012) “The Evolution of Transfers and Life Histories,” Experimental Gerontology. PMID:22750486 PMCID:PMC3436974 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2012.06.004

Chu, C. Y. and Ronald D. Lee. (2012) “Sexual Dimorphism and Sexual Selection: A Unified Economic Analysis,” Theoretical Population Biology. PMID: 22699007; PMCID: PMC3462896 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tpb.2012.06.002

Lee, Ronald and Andrew Mason (2012) “Population Aging, Intergenerational Transfers, and Economic Growth: Asia in a Global Context” in National Research Council of the National Academies. Aging in Asia: Findings from New and Emerging Data Initiatives. Panel on Policy Research and Data Needs to Meet the Challenge of Aging in Asia. J.P. Smith and M. Majmundar, Eds. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13361&page=77

Mason, A. S-H Lee, and R. Lee (2011) “Asian Demographic Change: Its Economic and Social Implications” written for a volume: Emerging Asian Regionalism: Ten Years after the Crisis–A Study. Jong-Wha Lee, Masahiro Kawai, Peter Petri, eds. Asian Development Bank.

Mason, A. S-H Lee, and R. Lee (2011) “Will Demographic Change Undermine Asia’s Growth Prospects?” in Emerging Asian Regionalism: Ten Years after the Crisis–A Study. Jong-Wha Lee, Masahiro Kawai, Peter Petri, eds. Asian Development Bank.

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

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: PMC2438215 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 VillagePopulation 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 dividendGENUS 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 CycleNational 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 DataInternational 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 speciesProc 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 GrowthJournal 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 OverviewGenus, 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 StatesThe 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 Mortality, 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 1870Journal 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