Two older adults and a young adult (Photo: Thinkstock)

The graying of America will not only strain programs like Medicare and Social Security and shrink the pool of experienced, productive workers but also slow economic growth because younger people caring for senior family members will be working less as a result.

That is the finding of a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, written by Finn Kydland, economics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Nick Pretnar, a Ph.D. student in economics at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business.

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Bernice Napach

Bernice Napach is a senior writer at ThinkAdvisor covering financial markets and asset managers, robo-advisors, college planning and retirement issues. She has worked at Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg TV, CNBC, Reuters, Investor's Business Daily and The Bond Buyer and has written articles for The New York Times, TheStreet.com, The Star-Ledger, The Record, Variety and Worth magazine. Bernice has a Bachelor of Science in Social Welfare from SUNY at Stony Brook.