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Live Long and Prosper Means Lower Interest Rates, BOE Blog Finds

A pedestrian walks past the Bank of England in the City of London, U.K. — A pedestrian walks past the Bank of England in the City of London, U.K.
Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

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January 31, 2018, 11:43 AM UTC

More old people means the era of low long-term interest rates is here to stay, according to Bank of England research.

As the populations of industrialized countries live longer, they are helping to push global borrowing costs lower, with demographic change alone accounting for 160 basis points of the 210 basis-point decline in interest rates since the early 1980s, a new blog by BOE staff published Wednesday showed.