Discovering the Demographic GDP

How much is the total remaining life that a population has left to live? It is around this issue that a new approach to demographic accountancy is being developed, with the objective of showing the dimension of the future of a population both in terms of remaining life "asset" at a specific moment and of "annual incomes", which can be seen as the demographic GDP, the total lifeyears acquired during the course of a year from births and the net balance of migration flows. The population must then face, with the abovementioned demographic GDP, the total number of life-years consumed during the same time period, having been lived or lost through deaths. The calculation of the asset and the demographic GDP for the Italian population and that of two big European countries has suggested some thoughts on the sustainability of the current demographic development and on the possible lines of intervention to manage this trend. © 2012 Vita e Pensiero / Pubblicazioni dell'Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore.