I don't know whether you have noticed this but Ben Bernanke Chairman of the Fed just made a very important speech about the coming demographic transition and its economic and fiscal implications. The speech has been duly noted by Mark Thoma and also Edward Hugh from Demography.Matters.
Now of course Bernanke talks a lot about the US perspective which is only natural and also as Edward points out;
Of course, it is not hard to see that Bernanke still casts the problem in terms of the traditional compositional (dependency ratio) impact, without getting into either the ageing and productivity, or the life cycle saving and consumption issues.
I believe it is time to acknowledge a very important point here. Bernanke's speech shows that this point is beginning to emerge as a consensual view but still let me be quite clear here ...