Population Aging and Intergenerational Transfers in Korea:Evidence from the National Transfer Accounts

The purpose of this study is to grasp how paid market work and unpaid household work are produced and consumed in each age group and how the gaps between production and consumption are redistributed to each generation. Therefore, this study uses NTA in 2000 and 2005 for paid market work. And it estimates the NTTA in 2004 as the unpaid household work satellite accounts of NTA for the first time in Korea. The main findings of this study are as follows. First, from the results of reallocation system including unpaid household work, the elderly is also playing the productive role of unpaid household work, and it is not desirable to recognize the elderly as the supported group who only consume by simply limiting to the market production if considering unpaid household work. It is needed to positively change into the recognition that the elderly also is a productive group that contributes to the national economy. Second, this study empirically analyzes the role of unpaid household work as the answer to the retirement-consumption puzzle. Considering unpaid household work, the drop in consumption after retirement greatly decreases, and the level of consumption on the lifecycle remains smoother and the level of consumption after retirement ages seems to be slightly more constant.