A 2017 BIS paper studied the past 150 years and found that working age cohorts tend to be disinflationary because they contribute to the stock of production, whereas dependents (the young and the elderly) are more net inflationary as they still consume but do not produce. Thus as population growth slows and the citizenry ages, creating more older dependents (retirees) who are no longer working, the initial outcome is net inflationary. This can be amplified as an aging population demands more labor-intensive medical services and competition increases for dwindling labor supply. https://www.bis.org/publ/work722.pdf The very old (>80) become more disinflationary/deflationary as they age (right side of chart), but their drag effect can be muted by increased longevity. Some compositional effects may be partly to blame for the scale of their drag (like the 80+ group having no age ceiling and older historical time series having lower avg lifespans). This contrasts with commonly held assumptions that an aging population has a cooling effect on inflation. The opposite is true. Now add this knowledge to the context of American demographics and where they're projected to go (linked in next tweets) /1(𝐓𝐗𝐌𝐂)