Abstract
From receiving countries' point of view, immigration may be an attractive policy option because it may attenuate the pace of aging in countries further along in their demographic transitions. Immigration policy potentially has important economic implications for several reasons. First, solely due to the compositional effects associated with immigration, a larger share of the population could be concentrated in the working ages. Second, immigration, particularly in the form of permanent immigration, may affect transfers and the accumulation of assets. Immigrants pay taxes that support children and the elderly, they have children who are supported by native taxpayers, and they grow old and rely on future generations of taxpayers. In this study, we assess whether cross-border immigration is likely to be an important policy option in response to population aging in Asia. The analysis presented here suggests, however, that realistic immigration policy is not likely to have a substantial influence on population age structure and its economic consequences on both receiving and sending countries are likely to be modest.
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