Demographic windows of opportunity and economic growth

The age structure of a population plays an important role in promoting economic growth through an increase the working age population absolute and relative to the child population. This paper investigates the effect the differential pace of demographic transition on the demographic dividend in Indian scenario and gives the opportunity that some state like Kerala and Tamil Nadu is completing first demographic dividend in year 2011 working and age population are decreasing on the other hand some state like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh their demographic transition start from the 2001 and till late 2030’s. The highest magnitude of dividend was in Andhra Pradesh due to the fast decline of the fertility rate. But in future fertility will also decline in the BIMARU state that will leads to decline in the dependency ratio. These state will provide labour force but in this context internal migration is critical important.

In India, health is a state subject, requiring investments to occur at state-level (n=35). With limited resources, range and complexities of issues (nutrition, infrastructure, urbanisation, education, economy) priority setting in health is often a challenge to policy-makers/donors. Using USAID’s Results-Framework as theoretical base and Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) as analytical approach – we have devised a methodology for identifying the state with ‘highest burden’ of health problems and with ‘potential for maximum impact’. We included eight poor performing states (Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Rajasthan) of India as units of analysis for this exercise. Percent deviation of the state from the national average on four-domains (Impact/Outcome; Access/Availability; Quality/Demand/Supply; and Sustainability) of results-framework were estimated by including most-recent indicators and by giving equal weight to each of the 57 included indicators. States were ranked (‘8’-maximum, ‘1’-minimum) according to cumulative-variation of indicators on these four-domains. Further, impact/outcomes were clubbed to get ‘burden’; and access/availability, quality, demand, supply and sustainability - were clubbed to measure ‘potential for impact’. Using MCDA approach – Uttar Pradesh

The study purpose is to understand projected changes in the population age structure, a critical condition for realizing demographic dividend, through 2100 in sub-Saharan Africa. Specific aims are: to estimate windows for advance investment and windows for benefiting from the economically favorable age structure, to compare the patterns of age structure changes to those in other less-developed regions, and to assess sensitivity of results across different assumptions in fertility decline projection, using the World Population Prospects 2012 Revision data. Three patterns emerged: a pattern close to that in other less-developed regions, another pattern suggesting much slower demographic transition in majority countries, and a final pattern where fertility decline is too slow to have substantial impact on the age structure. Even in the second pattern, the absolute population size increase may challenge realizing demographic dividend. Finally, about a half-child differences in TFR projection assumptions indicated significant variation in age structure changes.

In order to fill the research gaps in rural wealth data, researchers are increasingly measuring assets as a substitute for monetary data. Most of this research utilizes assets data as an explanatory variable that proxies for socioeconomic status. This paper uses asset data from rural Malawi as an outcome variable. The analysis compares the two most cited methods for calculating the wealth index, 1- the principal component analysis and 2- the unweighted fraction of total assets owned. The paper measures changes to wealth index levels and poverty transitions of 996 households from the 2004, 2006, and 2008 waves of the Malawi Longitudinal Study on Families and Health. A fixed effects model is used to control for unobserved heterogeneity while investigating the impact of household characteristics, including the timing of welfare program participation, on the levels of household wealth. The findings reveal a few substantive differences between wealth index methods. Consistent with the literature, being married, having a larger household and parental schooling are positively associated with the wealth index score. Among welfare programs, participation in an agricultural input subsidy is positively associated with the wealth index score and this association is stronger when using lagged year measures for program participation.

This study attempts to explore the effect of educational attainment on the age-sex composition of India’s population; and thus to understand the potential of its emerging demographic dividend till 2051, through multi-state population projection by levels of education. We have followed the framework of IIASA-Oxford’s new rounds of population projections by levels of educational attainment (to be released in the fall of 2012) regarding survival rates and educational attainment. The analysis is based on two scenarios where education profile in India will remain constant as of 2006; and will improve over the time. Further, we have assumed a fertility trend till 2049 based on the recent experience (Sample Registration System, 2000-2010). The projection is based on the population census of India (2001). Recent trend shows that in India, fertility rates across educational groups will not converge in near future. If India continues with current education profile, its TFR will reach 2.26 in 2021 and likely to remain constant, whereas given the assumed educational attainment they will reach the below-replacement-level TFR in 2041, with a slow but continuous decline in fertility rates. The demographic dividend is found to be highly dependent upon the level of education, which increases the productivity.

The labor force participation rate (LFPR), particularly for women has the topic of great interest for labor economist since decades. LFPR in Pakistan responds to economic, social, cultural and demographic mechanisms. Virtually, in every society, male labor force participation rate is higher than female, primarily to accommodate women’s reproductive functions and family responsibilities. Pakistan experiences a demographic window of opportunities in present and near future. In order to maximize the socio-economic benefits of this dividend, female LFPR plays a vital role. However, Pakistan has one of the lowest LFPR for women in the world, more accurately, one of the lowest rates for urban women—about 22 percent in 2010. Furthermore, it was observed that female with no education has the higher participation rate in latest LFS 2010. In this study, we assess the pattern of female LFPR and its determinant in Pakistan. We used several data sets such as, DHS, LFS and PSLM. This study is categories into two parts. The first part provides comprehensive overview of the LFPR by gender, place of residence and by educational level in Pakistan during last three decades and analyses the proximate determinant of LFPR. In the second step, this paper applies state-of-art multistate population projections methodology by level of employment in Pakis

The world has been amazed by social movements taking place in the Muslim Middle East and North African (MMENA) countries since 2010, particularly a large presence of young men and women in street demonstrations. These social movements have in part been attributed to high unemployment rates and poverty among young people who constitute a large share of the population. Some countries in East Asia and South America have made substantial socio-economic progress by particularly investing in education, reproductive health and economic activity of young women. This paper uses a range of data sources to investigate the extent to which women's status is associated with the level of socio-economic development in the MMENA countries in the year 2009, just before the recent social unrests began. There is a considerable diversity in development and women's status in the region, yet the level of development is found to be associated with women's higher access to education, better reproductive health and labour force participation. This suggests that the demographic changes taking place in the region and the power created by the current age structure of women can be guided and used to speed up the process of development within a favourable socio-political environment.

Population and development (Pop-Dev) as a concept has been discussed and studied but with much emphasis on fertility, the most prominent among the three population processes. But there remain to be unclear relationships between population growth and migration, particularly international migration. Some say international migration helps stabilize population growth, while others do not find any impact that overseas migration provides. Then concepts such as “demographic winter” and “demographic dividend” come into the picture, especially and particularly for overpopulated countries.

Nevertheless, the relationship between population-and-development processes and overseas migration remain underexplored. Meanwhile, scholarship and studies on international migration have seen attempts at trying to determine the social and economic impact of the overseas migration phenomenon unto origin and/or destination countries.

This population-and-development paper intends to provide a pilot attempt at determining the place of international migration (and its sister population process, internal migration) in the Pop-Dev discourse. The end goal of this paper is to look at the feasibility of making an attempt to measure the Pop-Dev impacts of the overseas migration phenomenon, through the case of the Philippines.

Demographic advantage contributes a large share of economic growth. This study tries to find out how far the presence of demographic window in BRICS countries is affecting efficiently in the growth of their economies compared to few selected developed economies (Japan, UK and USA). It is seen in this study that the contribution of demographic component (growth of share of worker in population) in growth of per capita GDP is higher in BRICS countries (except Russian Federation) compared to that of the developed nations. This study also finds out that the speed of convergence to steady state equilibrium income for BRICS is faster than that of the eight countries (BRICS and three developed nations) together. Education has a positive effect on economic growth for eight country model. The effect of growth of working age population to population ratio on growth in per capita GDP is more in case of BRICS countries. This indicates the substantial effect of demographic component on economic growth of BRICS countries particularly for China, India and South Africa since they are still going through the demographic dividend phase of transition.

I examine Kenya’s efforts in repositioning family planning and bring out the micro and macro benefits of family planning in the wake of the imminent demographic dividends. I contextualize my case by reviewing Kenya’s new population policy, the MDG targets and Kenya’s Vision 2030 which aims at transforming Kenya’s economy to an industrial economy by 2030. I first trace the policy environment behind family planning in Kenya and discuss how policies have impacted on population growth trajectories. I then discuss the country’s renewed efforts in family planning and assess the extent to which these efforts may assist the country reap from demographic dividends in the near future. Using available data, I highlight strategies needed by the Kenya government to accelerate family planning and reap demographic dividends. I argue that a substantial increase in family planning is critical in addressing the current high levels of unmet need for family planning (currently at 26 percent) and can assist families, communities and the nation to reap from demographic dividends.