The MacroDemography Database

The MacroDemography Database is an ongoing project aimed at combining long-run macroeconomic and demographic data in a readily usable format for researchers aiming to explore questions relating to the relationship between economies and their underlying age structure. By enriching the set of demographic variables used in long run economic analysis while taking advantage of the contribution of the Jordà-Schularick-Taylor Macrohistory Database in providing a rich set of macroeconomic variables for a panel of countries, it is possible to revisit many questions in the literature on the economic implications of population aging that were not possible in the past. My aim is to continue to update this database with various sources of demographic variable to improve the completeness of the panel over time.

At present the data contains an unbalanced panel of 18 countries spanning the time period from 1870 to 2018. The dataset "MacroDemography.dta" is the main data, while "MacroDemography_wProjections" appends median variant projections for population data from 2020 to 2100.

This dataset uses the following sources that should also be cited when using the relevant statistics:

• Macroeconomic Data: Òscar Jordà, Moritz Schularick, and Alan M. Taylor. 2017. "Macrofinancial History and the New Business Cycle Facts." in NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2016, volume 31, edited by Martin Eichenbaum and Jonathan A. Parker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Rates of return data: Òscar Jordà, Katharina Knoll, Dmitry Kuvshinov, Moritz Schularick, and Alan M. Taylor. 2019. "The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870-2015." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(3), 1225-1298.
• Bank balance sheet ratios: Òscar Jordà, Björn Richter, Moritz Schularick, and Alan M. Taylor. 2021. "Bank capital redux: solvency, liquidity, and crisis." The Review of Economic Studies, 88(1), 260-286.
• Demographic data: HMD. Human Mortality Database. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Germany), University of California, Berkeley (USA), and French Institute for Demographic Studies (France). Available at HMD (data downloaded on 15/03/2023).
• US Population data (pre-1933): The US Census
• Projections: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2022). World Population Prospects 2022.

These data were constructed as part of my ongoing work on the long run macroeconomic implications of population aging. I provide a broad set of controls for population age, in particular leaving some of the population-by-age group in a granular form for the researcher to construct their own variables. I also include a number of population age structure controls that use a polynomial fitting approach to control for the effect of moving population age weights across the entire age distribution. These are in the spirit of Fair and Dominguez (1991) and are described in the text and appendices of: Population age structure and secular stagnation, The age for austerity?, and Okay boomer...

The Demographic Trade Database

The Demographic Trade Database is an ongoing project compiling multiple sources of information on bilateral trade, macroeconomic variables, and population demographics into an easy to use resource. This data is made available to provide researchers with the tools needed to further explore questions relating to how underlying population movements affect the bilateral flow of trade between countries, and the degree to which projected changes in demographics may affect the global trade landscape in years to come. TradeDemography.dta provides the main dataset which contains trade and demographic values for 39,601 country-pairs from 1970-2019. The dataset TradeDemography_wProj.dta has the same economic data, but also includes medium variant projections for demographic variables from 2020-2100.

• Conte, M., P. Cotterlaz and T. Mayer (2022), "The CEPII Gravity database". CEPII Working Paper 2022-05, July 2022.
• United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2022). World Population Prospects 2022.

To see a description of the construction of demographic controls and their use in the context of bilateral trade data please see: Growing older and growing apart? Population age structure and trade