To assess magnitudes, the Board economists first examined the case in which the nation saves at its current rate for the next twenty years, thereby largely insulating the babyboom generation from the effects of the coming demographic transition.
After that, they assumed, consumption falls and saving rates rise, with all future generations experiencing the same percentage reduction in consumption relative to the baseline in which no population aging occurs. Their rough calculations suggest that, in this case, the per capita consumption of future generations would be about 14 percent less than what it would have been in the absence of demographic change.