Economists authored a new study showing that aging populations lead to greater implementation of robots in workplace settings.

«Demographic change — aging — is one of the most important factors leading to the adoption of robotics and other automation technologies,» says Daron Acemoglu, an MIT economist and co-author of a new paper detailing the results of the study.

The study finds that when it comes to the adoption of robots, aging alone accounts for 35 percent of the variation among countries. Within the U.S., the research shows the same pattern: Metro areas where the population is getting older at a faster rate are the places where industry invests more in robots.

«We provide a lot of evidence to bolster the case that this is a causal relationship, and it is driven by precisely the industries that are most affected by aging and have opportunities for automating work,» Acemoglu adds.

The paper, «Demographics and Automation,» has been published online by The Review of Economic Studies, and will be appearing in a forthcoming print edition of the journal. The authors are Acemoglu, an Institute Professor at MIT, and Pascual Restrepo PhD ’16, an assistant professor of economics at Boston University.

An «amazing frontier,» but driven by labor shortages

The current study is the latest in a series of papers Acemoglu and Restrepo have published about automation, robots, and the workforce. They have previously quantified job displacement in the U.S. due to robots, looked at the firm-level effects of robot use, and identified the late 1980s as a key moment when automation started replacing more jobs than it was creating.

Story Source: Materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Original written by Peter Dizikes. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.