Dopady stárnutí populace na udržitelnost veřejných financí: komparace České republiky a Finska v letech 1995–2025

This bachelor’s thesis analyzes the impacts of demographic aging on the sustainability of public finances in the Czech Republic and Finland, two European Union countries with similar demographic trends but different institutional frameworks. The aim of the thesis is to identify and compare the impact of population aging on key fiscal indicators, particularly public debt, the general government balance, and spending on pensions and healthcare, and to assess the role of institutional arrangements in mitigating these impacts. The theoretical part of the thesis defines basic concepts related to demographic aging and fiscal sustainability, presents the theory of demographic transition and the life-cycle theory, and is supplemented by a literature review focused on the fiscal impacts of population aging. The practical part is based on data for the period 1995–2025 and employs a combination of comparative analysis and econometric time-series modeling. The results show that the impacts of demographic aging are not uniform across fiscal sectors. While public debt and the general government balance are primarily influenced by the economic cycle and fiscal inertia in the short term, health care expenditures exhibit a statistically significant and nonlinear response to the growth in the share of seniors. The main finding of this study is that the Czech Republic is more vulnerable to the future fiscal impacts of demographic aging than Finland, primarily due to the absence of automatic correction mechanisms.