A statement of Harvard economists about the impact of demographic variables on the East Asian economic growth, often called "economic miracle", raised many discussions about the sources of economic growth. In this work, I focus on the historical development of the mainstream opinions on the field of demographic-economic relations and the role of the demographic characteristics in the economic growth models. This paper uses graphics tools to analyse the changes in mortality, fertility, dependecy ratios and age structures in four Asian countries (Hongkong, Singapore, South Korea and Japan). These demographics values prepared the basis for their rapid economic development. I compare empirical results of Kelley and Schmidt model, Bloom model and Mishra model to make a conclusion of what is the impact of demographic variables on the economic growth and how they contribute to the total economic growth. Finally, I draw the attention to the macroeconomic interventions with detailed focus on domestic savings, labour market flexibility and human capital investments.

This thesis focuses on the issue of European pension systems from a standpoint of their structure and sustainability in view of ageing of the population. The structure of systems is examined through pension models which embody combinations of financing (pay-as-you-go or capital funded) and pension calculation (defined contribution or defined benefit). The main object is to reveal how much are the European pension systems threatened by ageing of the population and sort them out according to this discovery. The risk rate is calculated as a ratio of the difference between expense rate on public pension pillars in 2012 and 2060 to the difference between dependency ratio in the same interval. The final figure shows the percentage of relative expenses per capita in 2060 compared to the base year of 2012. The main object is carried out by dividing the studied states into three groups. According to thesis' results, the most endangered state is Poland with a value of 28 % while the least endangered state is Luxembourg with a value of 110 % or relative expenses per capita compared to the base year of 2012.

This thesis examines the relationship between demographic ageing, as captured by temporal, within-country variation in the ratio of elderly to the working-age population – the dependency ratio – on citizens’ support for the welfare state. The research problem is vitally relevant considering the worsening demographic structure of advanced democracies, a process that is having considerable ramifications on the possibilities of financing comprehensive welfare states. Using a time-series cross-sectional design, and building on representative survey data from 13 advanced democracies, the thesis specifically assesses the relationship between the dependency ratio, and individual spending preferences towards 1) the welfare state as a whole, as captured by an additive index, 2) education policy, and 3) old-age benefits. It also assesses whether demographic ageing exacerbates attitude differences between age groups, thereby scrutinising some assumptions made previously on the issue of intergenerational cleavages. The thesis uncovers no significant relationship between the dependency ratio and general support for the welfare state. However, the dependency ratio is shown be positively correlated with citizens’ support for education policy, while being instead potentially negatively correlated with support for old-age benefits. The differences between these two policies, in terms of their enjoyed support, are important considering the presumed shift in welfare state priorities towards what is commonly called social investment. Indeed, they indicate that there may be popular support for the type of reform strategies whose purpose is to invest in tomorrow’s diminishing workforce, whereas the support for more compensatory old-age policies may instead be weakening. There are also signs that the positive effect on the support for education policy is lower among older individuals. This evidence is quite interesting considering the previous expectations of deepening intergenerational cleavages as a consequence of demographic ageing, but the weak indications of this development in previous empirical research.

The aim of this thesis is evaluate the development of the inner peripheral regions of the Czech Republic between years 2001 and 2011 in terms of internal resources (human and social potential, demographics) of these location. In the theoretical part were described differences between peripheral and core regions, the specifics of peripheral regions, their formation and how the periphery can act on human and social capital. In the practical part we set five hypotheses that we used for evaluate developments. These hypotheses were focused on the Index of aging, Index of total dependency ratio, education, employment and commuting residents to work and school. The results were evaluated not only between the inner peripheral regions but also between peripherals and other regions.