As workers get older, are robots the answer?

They define middle-aged workers as those between the ages of 26 and 55, and older workers as those over the age of 55. They find that countries that are undergoing more rapid aging, meaning that they are experiencing a greater proportional decrease in the number of middle-aged workers relative to older workers, invest significantly more in robotics. They are more likely to develop new technologies and manufacture robots, and to deploy these robots in production. Population aging can explain almost 40 percent of the country-to-country variation in the adoption of industrial robots. The researchers estimate that a 10 percentage point increase in the ratio of the number of middle-aged to older workers is associated with 0.9 more robots per thousand workers.