The national transfer accounts for the Netherlands-2015
As the Dutch society is aging, there is an increasing need to understand how this influences economic flows. We aim to measure and analyze the macroeconomic aspects of our aging society, by introducing the age dimension into the System of National Accounts.
In order to achieve this, the National Transfer Accounts is set up as a satellite account of the System of National Accounts (SNA). The methodology used to create age profiles for all flows within the framework of the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) is presented in detail, for this it is needed to link several micro data sources to the NTA and SNA concepts. The results presented in this paper offer a preliminary picture of the size and direction of intergenerational flows. These are important to understand in an aging society, because population projections show that relative sizes of age classes will change, meaning for the Netherlands that the share of elderly in the total population will increase. This burdens many economic flows, for example the health care costs and pension benefits, that mainly, or even entirely, flow to the elderly. Other flows are directed specifically to the young, expenditures on education for example, these flows will resist the challenges of an aging society better, because their share in the total population will decline. Using the methodology of the National Transfer Accounts, these insights are now linked to the System of National Accounts, allowing for socio-economic analysis in a macro-economic framework.
