As Time Goes By in Argentina

Argentina is passing through a demographic transition that constitutes a window of economic and socialopportunities and challenges. Argentina's working-age population represents the largest proportion of itstotal population. The country just began a 30-year period with the most advantageous age structure of itspopulation, which could favor greater economic growth. This situation, known as the demographic window ofopportunity, will last until the 2040s. The dynamics of the fertility and mortality rates signify a gradual agingof the population, with implications for various dimensions of the economy, the social protection system,public policies, and society in general.As Time Goes By in Argentina: Economic Opportunities and Challenges of the Demographic Transition exploresthe opportunities and challenges that the demographic transition poses for the Argentine economy, its mostimportant social sectors such as the healthcare, education, and social protection systems, and the potentialfiscal trade-offs. Although Argentina is moving through its demographic transition, it only recently began toenjoy the window of opportunity; this constitutes a great opportunity to achieve an accumulation of capitaland future economic growth.Once the window of opportunity passes, population aging will have a significant impact on the level ofexpenditure, especially on spending in the social protection system. This signifies a challenge from a fiscalpolicy point of view, because if long-term reforms are not undertaken to mediate these effects, thedemographic transition will put pressure on the reallocation of fiscal resources among social sectors.Population aging poses concerns related to sustaining the rate of economic growth with a smallerworking-age population. Taking advantage of the current window of opportunities, increasing savingsthat will finance the accumulation of capital, and increasing future labor force productivity in this way is achallenge for the Argentine economy.As Time Goes By in Argentina will be of importance to both academia, establishing a new research field,and policymakers, given that the potential impact that a slow but constant phenomenon, such as thedemographic transition, will have on the Argentine economy, suggests the importance of the currentdebate on future reforms to mitigate the potential negative effects of aging.