Epistemological Foundation for Treating Population Aging as a Causal Variable with Known Effects

Leroy O. Stone, Statistics Canada
Alexandre Genest, Human Resources Development Canada
Jacques Légaré, Université de Montréal

Using population aging as an example, it is argued that a central challenge of changing population age structures is to construct adequately defensible bases for claims concerning the effects of such changes. Validating such claims requires widely supported criteria of validity. With regard to the claim that population aging is a causal agent with specific effects, such criteria of validity are rarely discussed in the literature. This paper examines how claims about effects of population aging have been supported in the literature, and it uses the results of that examination to try to construct part of the foundation of an epistemology of the causal influences of population aging. It also discusses the issue of how to isolate what population aging has uniquely contributed to deemed 'societal effects' because of the way it is embedded a complex of variables that have causal influences, illustrating with the case of cohort succession.