Demographic windows of opportunity and economic growth

China and India are the two most populous countries in the world. However, they have followed different demographic courses. Both countries have experienced substantial expansion of their markets for a range of commodities. However, dissimilar household composition and socioeconomic paths have affected household preferences in the two countries. The paper reviews macro demographic trends that have led to different demographic structures with significant implications for productivity and household purchasing power and discretionary spending spending in the two countries. It then conducts an examination of household expenditures based on household surveys undertaken in 2005 and assesses similarities and disparities in household preferences for broad categories of goods and services in rural and urban areas, and also for households with varying levels of income. This view provides a basis for hypothesis building concerned with market growth for progressive commodities, in light of current demographic structures in the two countries and projected fertility and population growth.

This paper presents the Skilled Population strategy that helped Egypt as a developing country to reach the goal of having and making the best use of a high-quality pool of skills. The model has been applied by the industrial modernization center, The EU joint program with the Egyptian Government. The project has been applied in Egypt, On Damietta city, to enhance different industrial sectors .
This program has developed a global Skills Strategy as an integrated, cross-government strategic framework that helps Egypt to identify the strengths and weaknesses of its national skills system, benchmark them internationally, and develop policies that can transform better skills into better jobs, which resulted with economic growth and social inclusion
The expected outcomes from this Model, is an approach Skills Strategy that shifts the focus from traditional measures of skills, to a much broader perspective over a whole lifetime.
In addition, the paper points out skills value, that should be continuously maintaining and upgrading throughout life to compete and connect in ways that drive economies and societies forward.

About 50% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa are children and adolescents. This study uses the age-structure-economic framework to analyse census data for three countries in the region to examine whether the large proportion of children and adolescents are economic dividend or burden. Census data for Kenya, Senegal and South Africa were purposively selected for analysis. Descriptive analytical strategies were used to examine the age structure, educational attainment and employment status. The series of census data analysed show vividly that large proportion of young people in the selected countries is mainly dependants. Thus, the youthful population structure is critical to the prevailing high dependency ratio in the countries. Consistent with age-structure-economic framework adopted for the study, the present proportion of children and adolescents are more of economic burden to individual families and governments. Nevertheless, if sustainable fertility decline is pursued through reductionate population policies, the current large proportion of children and adolescents would graduate into the working age population in about a decade or so and dependency ratio would begin to fall. If appropriate economic, social and legal frameworks are put in place, this situation is most likely to propel rapid economic growth.

In recent years the analysis of relationships between changes in age structure and economic performance has attracted extensive attention. Children require intensive investment in health, nutrition and education, prime-age adults supply labor and savings and the elderly require expenditures on health care and retirement income. In this sense, an age structure concentrated at prime-age adults reduces the dependency ratio, and is seen as an advantage characterized as a demographic window. This research describes the life-cycle income, consumption and saving patterns of Mexican households. If the life-cycle hypothesis is correct, the age profile of income, consumption and saving should be relatively higher for the young than the old and we could accept the supposition of an optimistic link between demographic change and saving in the aggregate economy. We construct a pseudo-panel from the Encuesta Nacional de Ingresos y Gastos de los Hogares (ENIGH) between 1994 and 2008. Results show that the effects of age structure on consumption and saving rate are not coherent with the life-cycle hypothesis; there is no evidence of dissaving among the old age. Findings also show cohort and period effects.

The effect of changes in age structure on economic growth has been widely studied in the demography and population economics literature. The beneficial effect of changes in age structure after a decrease in fertility has become known as the demographic dividend. In this paper we reassess the empirical evidence on the associations among economic growth, changes in age structure, labor force participation and educational attainment. Using a global panel of countries, we find that once the effect of human capital dynamics is controlled for there is no evidence that changes in age structure affect labor productivity. Our results imply that improvements in educational attainment are the key to explaining productivity and income growth and that a substantial portion of the demographic dividend is an education dividend.

India’s demographic dividend has attracted increasing attention in recent years. Although there has been general consensus on the demographic opportunity, the ability of the country to take advantages of demographic opportunity are often debated. The suspicion was mainly on account of the ability of the economy to absorb productively the unskilled and semi educated labourforce. At the same time, the available empirical evidences present positive effect of demographic changes on the economy. Thus there appears to be a contradiction on the estimates and general writings on the demographic-economic interaction in the country. One of the important pathways through which demographic dividend occurs is through increasing female labourforce participation. But female labourforce participation of those states with rapid demographic changes are relatively low in the country. Therefore, there are large concerns on the contribution of female labourforce participation for the economic growth in the country. But most of these are narratives and are not based on scientific estimation. This study makes an attempt to quantify the effect of female labourforce participation on economic changes using both panel data (using 2SLS estimates) as well as micro data (considering number of children and its impact on labourforce participation).

The pattern of economic development of the region necessitates movement and migration of people from one region to another. The Gujarat state is considered to be one of the developed states of India, which gained statehood in 1960. The State has been showing differential inter-district migration trends. The demographic changes in the distribution of Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) (as enshrined in Constitution of India) are recorded in various census years since 1961 to 2001.

This paper examines the regional development changes based on development indicators for decadal years of 1961 to 2001. The mapping of the development status of districts and blocks in these decades have been done and superimposed on the share of SC and ST population of State.

The paper attempts to bring out the relationship between the statuses of economic development vis-à-vis the changing demographic patterns. The paper uses the Geographical Information System (GIS), statistical analysis tools and technology to detect the change across the decades from 1961 to 2001. In the present context, the relevance of the study is to highlight the regional characteristics on the basis of development and demographic changes especially the composition and distribution of SC and ST population.

This paper outlines how a potential ‘collateral’ demographic dividend is presently arising in New Zealand, as the relatively youthful Māori population (median age 23) goes through its dividend years alongside its ageing, mainly European-origin counterpart (median age 40). As with the conventional first and second dividend periods, converting the collateral dividend to an economic windfall will not occur in and of itself – that requires identification of the window of opportunity, proactive investment in social capital, and political will. The paper locates the arguments in the context of New Zealand’s major industrial groupings which already have fewer employed people at labour market entry than exit age, especially in rapidly ageing regional areas which paradoxically have a disproportion of youthful Māori residents.

The support ratio is a simple and intuitive indicator of the consequences of population aging, and its changes are interpreted as implying corresponding changes in per capita age adjusted consumption. However, this holds only when net consumers rely on transfers from net producers. If instead they rely on asset income, then support ratio variations have no effect on per capita consumption if the economy is open, and likewise across golden rule economies with different population growth rates. Here we reformulate the support ratio to include both asset income and transfers. In countries in which the elderly are funded heavily by public transfers as in Sweden or Austria, the new measure gives the same result as the old one. In countries like the US or Mexico where old age consumption is funded more heavily out of asset income, the new measures suggest that the effects of population aging will be muted.

This paper examines demographic transition and the emerging widows of opportunities and challenges for economic development in Bangladesh. The data for the study come from different sources such as censuses and the national level surveys. Population projections based estimates are used to describe the different aspects and consequences of future demographic transition and demographic bonuses. Bangladesh is passing through a crucial phase of demographic transition primarily due to falling fertility and mortality that leads to changes in the size and age structure of the rapidly growing population of the country. Working population of age 25 to 64 that usually has high activity rates will increase in relative and absolute terms at least until 2041, while the younger segment (aged 15 to 24) - a proxy of those entering for the first time into the labor force- in contrast, will have negative growth rates. As a result, Bangladesh is likely to achieve the demographic window of opportunities and that opportunity may be achieved by 2021 and it may continue until 2041. This bonus, however, can only be claimed if full employment and higher productivity are pursued.. Taking up and understanding demographic challenges must therefore be a priority for the government of Bangladesh.