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上，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、向内移徙（特别是年轻的拉丁美洲人）和在其他地方寻求就业机会的人向外移徙以及迁往其他地方退休的人等问题将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对区域经济的经济结构变化作出反应并产生影响。到目前为止，这些人口-经济的相互作用和反馈仅通过使用汇总的人口数据进行了探索，其中使用“代表性家庭”来检查消费的作用。先前对芝加哥经济的分析揭示了不同年龄和收入的家庭在消费模式上的巨大差异，以及随着时间的推移，人口老龄化与迁入和迁出人口的不同特征可能对地区经济福利指标产生的复杂相互作用。最初的两地区模型（芝加哥-美国其他地区）将扩展到多地区背景（最初是中西部、南部和美国其他地区），以捕捉经济结构变化（如生产和外包的碎片化、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集，以及老龄化、移民、退休人员向外迁移、社会保障基金和退休年龄变化的影响之间的相互作用，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，以探索其他方案，例如一个地区是否应该更积极地吸引移民。该分析将在目前最先进的建模和政策领域之间建立联系，在这些领域，缺乏一致的、基于可靠的分析来帮助决策者评估各种选择，而在这些领域，仍然有重要的机会来推进最先进的建模技术，即复杂的人口变化对区域经济的短期和长期影响。

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.