Investigating the effect of population Age structure on economic growth and productivity in Iran

Economic growth is an important macroeconomic goal of any country, but achieving high economic growth requires examining the factors that affect it. Changing the age structure of the population is one of the factors that affect the economic growth and productivity of countries. The share of the working-age population, the child dependency ratio, and the aged dependency ratio are among those demographic variables whose changes indicate the evolution of population structure. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to investigate and analyze the effect of population age structure on economic growth and labor productivity in Iran. In this regard, we have used the ordinary least squares(OLS) method to investigate the relationship between the population structure, economic growth, and labor productivity over the period 1975-2017. The results show that the increase in the population aged 0-14 years and population aged 15-64 years has a negative impact and the aged dependency ratio has a positive impact on economic growth. An increase in the aged dependency and a reduction in the child dependency ratio is found to be associated with an increase in productivity.