Europe is experiencing the challenges of aging. However, different evolutions of their dependency ratios are observed, stimulated in many cases by the baby boom generation entering retirement ages. Simultaneously, a huge educational expansion also started in the second half of the 20th century, but at different speeds and levels. Education has been pointed out as a possible solution to offset the impact of aging on the sustainability of the welfare state, but, is this true for all European countries? Have all of them taken advantage of previous lower demographic dependency ratios? In this paper, we try to answer these questions by estimating the change in demographic dependency from an economic perspective considering the implications of a changing educational composition. We combine economic profiles of production and consumption by age and educational level (obtained using the National Transfer Accounts methodology) and population projections by level of education to estimate the Economic Support Ratio ( growth rates from 1950 to 2080 for 19 European countries. Results show that the positive since 1970 for a majority of countries is, in most cases, driven by an universal educational expansion, as the expected positive effect of the post-war baby boom is not observed in all countries. Around 2010–15, the ESR growth turns negative in many countries, as population aging cannot be offset anymore by on-going educational increases. In the future, the age effect will be the main driver of the ESR evolution due to the strong aging process, and an educational expansion almost fulfilled.

中文翻译：

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老龄化欧洲的代际经济依赖：教育和人口变化的贡献

欧洲正在经历老龄化的挑战。然而，在许多情况下，受婴儿潮一代进入退休年龄的刺激，他们的抚养比发生了不同的演变。与此同时，20世纪下半叶也开始了大规模的教育扩张，但速度和水平有所不同。有人指出，教育是抵消老龄化对福利国家可持续性影响的可能解决方案，但是，对于所有欧洲国家来说都是如此吗？他们是否都利用了之前较低的人口抚养比？在本文中，我们试图通过从经济角度估计人口依赖性的变化来回答这些问题，并考虑教育构成变化的影响。我们将按年龄和教育水平划分的生产和消费经济概况（使用国民转移账户方法获得）和按教育水平划分的人口预测相结合，以估算经济支持率（19 个欧洲国家 1950 年至 2080 年的增长率）。结果表明自 1970 年以来，大多数国家的积极影响在大多数情况下是由普及教育扩张推动的，因为并非所有国家都观察到战后婴儿潮的预期积极影响。2010-15 年左右，ESR 增长转向由于人口老龄化已无法通过持续的教育增长来抵消，因此在许多国家，年龄效应将是ESR演变的主要驱动力，因为老龄化进程强劲，教育扩张即将实现。