Lars Lønstrup
DKK 757,000, funded by the Danish Research Council (08-03-2019)
Title: A Theoretical Inquiry ”Inequality in Life Span"
This research project proposes a study of the macroeconomic consequences of a yet underexplored dimension of inequality, the inequality in how long we live. The fundamental research question that this project aims at answering is: How does life span inequality within a population affect the population averages of years of schooling, the age of retirement, and the level of income? The main idea that the project will explore is that life span inequality may imply changes in the educational composition of a population. Intuitively, if higher educated individuals live longer than others, the share of high-educated individuals in a cohort will increase over time. In around a decade, from the end of the 19th century to the end of the 20th century, life span inequality across educational groups declined, whereas is has widened the last two decades. The research project will analyze how the economy of countries was affected by these changes.