Independent research

Topic

Fiscal policy

Studies of public budgets under demographic change, grants, and emergency fiscal pressure.

Topic JSONAll research

Related questions

  • What happens to a higher retirement age when younger workers are unemployed?
  • How do productivity and disability change the case for a later retirement age?
  • How does an ageing electorate change the politics of public spending?
  • What happens to intergenerational transfers when the median voter is older?
  • How can an ageing-related fiscal deficit be closed?
  • What is the welfare comparison among emergency responses to demographic fiscal pressure?
  • What is the fiscal comparison between supporting another child and financing an older population?
  • How does population decline change the public cost of low fertility?

Relevant claims

  • GSX:POP-003: In the average scenario, raising the comparison retirement age from 60 to 65 produces a cumulative modelled public gain of R213 billion for a one-million-person cohort. Age 70 produces R369 billion and age 75 produces R448 billion. The last five-year step adds R79 billion, about half the gain from moving from 65 to 70.
  • GSX:POP-004: In the 2025 calibration, people aged 60 or older are 15.1 percent of adults but 20.7 percent of votes cast. Applying the 2024 age-turnout pattern produces a median voter aged 43, four years older than the median adult.
  • GSX:POP-005: Among five packages that each close a hypothetical R150 billion annual ageing gap, the balanced transition has the lowest modelled welfare-loss index, 64.5. The low-visible-pain package, which leans on inflation, diffuse cuts, and continuing borrowing, scores 107.3 and leaves about R720 billion of emergency debt after ten years.
  • GSX:POP-006: In the average run, the median cost of one permanently additional birth ranges from about R720,000 for free childcare to R4.18 million for a parent tax exemption. The targeted family package costs about R780,000 per added birth and produces nearly 99,000 additional births per million prospective households. A cash top-up costs about R1.76 million per added birth and produces only about 12,000.
  • GSX:POP-011: Demographic pressure, in this synthesis, is rarely a shortage of people in the abstract. It is a failure of timing, matching and institutions. Income can arrive after it is useful, workers can exist outside the jobs that need them, homes can stand in the wrong places, and reform can begin after the cheaper options have expired.
  • GSX:POP-012: Every modelled path closes the first-year accounting gap of about R1.23 trillion. In the guardrailed case that ends in 2052, real output in 2080 is 1.2 percent below the no-shock path and the present value of lost output from 2050 to 2080 is R3.7 trillion.
  • GSX:SRD-001: If the SRD envelope of about R253.5 billion in constant 2026 rand had been reprioritised into an industrial fund, the best case holds about R789 billion in productive assets by 2050 and generates roughly R39 billion a year in public cash. The annual cash flow exceeds one current SRD budget year only around 2049.
  • GSX:SRD-002: Withholding the SRD envelope has a central explicit welfare cost of R426.9 billion in welfare-equivalent 2026 rand, about R1.68 of social cost for every R1 withheld. The scenario range is R237 billion to R743 billion.
  • GSX:SRD-003: At a 6 percent real discount rate, the best industrial case overtakes the central value of the cash transfer in 2040 when the surviving public asset is counted, and in 2051 when only operating benefits are counted.
  • GSX:SRD-004: In the central mixed portfolio, R225 billion of public industrial capital mobilises R506 billion of gross investment, 2.25 times the public envelope. After deductions, R383 billion remains operating, 1.70 times the envelope.
  • GSX:IND-006: Under the central rule, the fund reaches about R586 billion by 2060 and transfers about R16 billion that year, rising to R1.48 trillion and R43 billion by 2125, in constant 2026 rand.

Major assumptions

Datasets

11

studies

Studies

The question each study asks, with its stable identifier.

Connected topics