Demographic Challenges to Regional Development

虽然大量的注意力都集中在影响美国大都市，州和区域经济的经济结构变化，但很少有研究探讨人口变化的作用及其在未来几十年可能产生的影响。 特别是，人口老龄化、移民（特别是年轻的拉丁美洲人）和在其他地方寻找就业机会的人以及那些搬到其他地方退休的人的移民问题，有望对区域经济的增长和发展产生积极影响。 此外，这些人口变化本身可能会对区域经济体的经济结构变化作出反应并产生影响。 迄今为止，这些人口与经济的相互作用和反馈仅使用汇总的人口数据进行了探讨，其中使用了“代表性家庭”来研究消费的作用。 先前的分析集中在芝加哥经济揭示了不同年龄和收入的家庭的消费模式的巨大差异，以及人口老龄化与不同的移民和外来移民的复杂相互作用，随着时间的推移，对区域经济的福利指标。 最初的两区域模型（芝加哥-美国其他地区）将扩展到多区域背景（最初是美国中西部、南部和其他地区），以捕捉经济结构变化（如生产和外包的分散化、州际和国际贸易的变化）与人口变化之间的相互作用。 经济和人口变化之间的交叉点，以及老龄化、移民、退休人员外移和社会保障资金和退休年龄变化之间的相互作用，为美国的区域经济提供了一系列复杂的潜在结果。 多区域人口-经济模型将与政策组合模块联系起来，以探讨替代方案，例如一个区域是否应该更积极地吸引移民。 该分析将提供当前最先进的建模和政策竞技场之间的联系，其中缺乏一致的，健全的分析，以帮助政策制定者评估选项，以及重要的机会仍然存在，以推进在建模中的最先进的国家的短期和长期的影响复杂的人口变化对区域经济。

While a great deal of attention has been directed to economic structural changes affecting the metropolitan, state and regional economies of the US, very little research has explored the role of demographic changes and their likely impacts over the next several decades. In particular, the issues of an aging population, in-migration (especially of younger Latinos) and the out-migration of those seeking employment opportunities elsewhere as well as those moving to other places to retire promise to create a dynamic impact on the growth and development of regional economies. Further, these demographic changes are themselves likely to both respond to and affect the economic structural changes in the regional economies. To date, these demographic-economic interactions and feedbacks have only been explored using aggregated demographic data where a "representative household" was used to examine the role of consumption. Prior analyses that was focused on the Chicago economy revealed dramatic differences in consumption patterns by households of different ages and incomes and the complex interactions that an aging population in concert with different profiles for in- and out-migrants can have on indicators of welfare for a regional economy over time. The initial two-region model (Chicago-Rest of the US) will be expanded to a multi-region context (initially, the Midwest, South and Rest of the US) to capture the interactions between structural changes in the economy (such as the fragmentation of production and outsourcing, changes in interstate and international trade) and demographic changes. The intersection between economic and demographic changes and interactions between the effects of aging, immigration, retiree out-migration and changes in social security funding and retirement age provide a complex array of potential outcomes for the regional economies of the US. The multi-regional demographic-economic model will be linked with a policy mix module to explore alternative scenarios such as whether a region should be more pro-active in attracting immigrants. The analysis will provide a link between current state of the art modeling and the policy arena where there is a dearth of consistent, soundly based analysis to help policy-makers evaluate options and where important opportunities remain to advance the state of the art in modeling short- and long-run implications of complex demographic changes on regional economies.