In Aesop’s words “grasshoppers and ants” in Europe: a misleading story

The demographic asset (DA) of a population plays a fundamental role in forecasting its future performance in terms of life-year available to live. Although for a single person an additional year has the same value at every age, for a population it counts differently at each age: it represents a cost when gained in education or retirement age or a credit when in active age. As far as life ages (split into the conventional three age groups referred to education, activity and retirement) are concerned, the annual variation of the balance between the negative (education and retirement) and the positive (activity) components of the DA results from the combination of the variation of each of the three modules. By comparing the trend of these interactions to the consolidated gross debt the European clichés of “grasshoppers and ants” look fuzzy. In this paper we intend to forecast some possible scenarios for the amount of productive future of five European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) considering that a certain share is already mortgaged through the consolidated gross debt.