Will Saudi Arabia get older? Will its pension system be sustainable? Spectral answers

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to answer the following two questions: Will Saudi Arabia get older? Will its pension system be sustainable?Design/methodology/approachThe methodology/approach is to forecast KSA’s population with wavelet analysis combined with the Burg model which fits a pth order autoregressive model to the input signal by minimizing (least squares) the forward and backward prediction errors while constraining the autoregressive parameters to satisfy the Levinson-Durbin recursion, then relies on an infinite impulse response prediction error filter.FindingsSpectral analysis projections of Saudi age groups are more optimistic than the Bayesian probabilistic model sponsored by the United Nations Population Division: Saudi Arabia will not get older as fast as projected by the United Nations model. The KSA’s pension system will stay sustainable based on spectral analysis, whereas it will not based on the U.N. model.Originality/valueSpectral analysis will provide better insight and understanding of population dynamics for Saudi government policymakers, as well as economic, health and pension planners.