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National Time Transfer Accounts Manual

Publication Date:
Category: Population
Number of Pages: 74
Language: English
Publication File:

This manual picks up where the previous manual in the series left off. The earlier manual, on the methodology of National Transfer Accounts (NTAs), shows how National Accounts data can be used to construct age profiles of economic production and consumption and to illustrate how resources flow from persons in age groups producing more than they consume to those in age groups producing less than they consume (United Nations, 2013). 

The NTA project calls this system of age-based transfers the “generational economy”. Uncovering and elucidating the role of such transfers has been the project’s major contribution. NTA research has revealed how countries have evolved various means of meeting the needs of different age groups and how the nature of such systems impacts economic growth, human capital investment, intergenerational equity and sustainability as populations continue to change through growth or decline and through shifts in the age distribution towards younger or older ages.