Life Expectancy, Schooling Time and Endogenous Growth

Published as an article in: Economic Inquiry, 2004, vol. 42, issue 4, pp. 602–617.

I analyze how changes in life expectancy affect retirement age, education time, and growth rates of economies. I set up a continuous time, overlapping generations model of endogenous growth with externalities in human capital production. I find that increases in life expectancy give rise to first, higher retirement ages and second, higher education spans. A threshold level for life expectancy exists such that per capita growth rates follow an inverted U pattern.