Demografia i estalvi a Espanya

The research goes in depth in the mechanisms through which households make decisions on resource allocation between consumption and saving. From the information provided by the Spanish Family Budget Survey for 1990/91, it has been defined household income and consumption, as a first approach to the problem, by adding payroll tax payments and all other taxes paid by the family unit (and net of noncontributiory benefits). At the same time, private consumption has been calculated including public goods consumption (health care and education). These modifications change considerably household saving according to age, showing that of the retired a dramatic drop (with negative saving in absolute terms). However, with data using traditional concepts of disposable income and private consumption, retired had the highest household saving rate. It is a purpose of this project, which is a continuation of work already done, the integration of the public sector and the rest of the economy in a single household sector, which should allow to approach the "true" household saving rate by age and, hence, to go further in the analysis of the consequences which agein popullation will have on the level of saving in Spain (in line with similar work done for the main OECD countries). Finally, through econometric and demographic simulations,it will be tried to carry forward the results up to the 2050 horizon in order to obtain a first approach to the impact of demographic and family changes on the Spanish saving level. At the same time, more complex modelling (by including labour market and a production function) should allow to approach deeper changes linked to demographic change.