Population Dynamics in India and Implications for Economic Growth

Demographic change in India is opening up new economic opportunities. As in many countries, declining infant and child mortality helped to spark lower fertility, effectively resulting in a temporary baby boom. As this cohort moves into working ages, India finds itself with a potentially higher share of workers as compared with dependents. If working-age people can be productively employed, India's economic growth stands to accelerate. Theoretical and empirical literature on the effect of demographics on labor supply, savings, and economic growth underpins this effort to understand and forecast economic growth in India. Policy choices can potentiate India's realization of economic benefits stemming from demographic change. Failure to take advantage of the opportunities inherent in demographic change can lead to economic stagnation.age structure, China-India comparison, conditional convergence, demographic dividend, demographic transition, economic growth, economic growth in India, policy reform, population health, population of India

Contraception and the Celtic Tiger

New cross-country evidence for 1965 to 1995 is presented on the link that runs from population change to economic growth. The estimates indicate that demographic change is a powerful determinant of income growth, operating mainly via the effect of changes in age structure. The estimates also indicate that the benefits of demographic change can be greatly magnified by a favourable policy environment. A case study of economic growth in Ireland suggests that the legalisation of contraception in 1980 resulted in a sharp decline in fertility and a sizeable increase in the relative share of the working-age population. This demographic shift, operating in conjunction with a favourable policy environment, can explain in large measure the birth of the Celtic Tiger. However, given demographic projections for Ireland, the Tiger’s roar may become less formidable as it continues to mature.

Global Demography: Fact, Force and Future

In the past 50 years, the world accelerated its transition out of long-term demographic stability. As infant and child mortality rates fell, populations began to soar. In most countries, this growth led to falling fertility rates. Although fertility has fallen, the population continues to increase because of population momentum; it will eventually level off. In the meantime, demographic change has created a ‘bulge’ generation, which today appears in many countries as a large working-age population. This cohort will eventually become a large elderly population, in both developed and developing countries. Population growth has been the subject of great debate among economists and demographers. Until recently, most have agreed on a middle ground, in which population growth per se has no effect on economic growth. New evidence suggests that changes in the age structure of populations – in particular, a rising ratio of working-age to non-working-age individuals – leads to the possibility of more rapid economic growth, via both accounting and behavioural effects. The experiences of east Asia, Ireland and sub-Saharan Africa all serve as evidence of the effect of demographic change on economic growth (or lack thereof). Both internal migration (from rural to urban areas) and international migration complicate this picture. The overall implications of population growth for policy lie in the imperative for investments in health and education, and for sound policies related to labour, trade and retirement. Understanding future trends is essential for the development of good policy. Demographic projections can be quite reliable, but huge uncertainties – in the realms of health, changes in human life span, scientific advances, migration, global warming and wars – make overall predictions extremely uncertain.demography, growth, forecast, Asia, Ireland, Sub-Saharan, Africa

Global Demographic Change: Dimensions and Economic Significance

Transitions from high mortality and fertility to low mortality and fertility can be beneficial to economies as large baby boom cohorts enter the workforce and save for retirement, while rising longevity has perhaps increased both the incentive to invest in education and to save for retirement. We present estimates of a model of economic growth that highlights the positive effects of demographic change during 1960-95. We also show how Ireland benefited from lower fertility in the form of higher labor supply per capita and how Taiwan benefited through increased savings rates. We emphasize, however, that the realization of the potential benefits associated with the demographic transition appears to be dependent on institutions and policies, requiring the productive employment of the potential workers and savings the transition generates. Economic projections based on an "accounting" approach that assumes constant age-specific behavior are likely to be seriously misleading.

Why Punish the Children? A Reappraisal of the Children of Incarcerated Mothers in America

The incarceration rate for female offenders has skyrocketed in recent years. This has spurred unwelcomed growth of the invisible class of infants, children, and teenagers who find themselves without a mother at home. While new legions of children are growing up separated from their mothers, government agencies appear more powerless than ever to attend to the needs of their children, their mothers, and their caregivers. Now more than ever, we must renew our concern and define our commitment to these children

Booms, Busts, and Echoes: How the biggest demographic upheaval in history is affecting global development

For much (and perhaps most) of human history, demographic patterns were fairly stable: the human population grew slowly, and age structures, birth rates, and death rates changed very little. The slow long-run growth in population was interrupted periodically by epidemics and pandemics that could sharply reduce population numbers, but these events had little bearing on long-term trends.demography, growth, global development

Changing Research Perspectives on the Global Health Workforce

Past research on the health workforce can be structured into three perspectives – “health workforce planning” (1960 through 1970s); “the health worker as economic actor” (1980s through 1990s); and “the health worker as necessary resource” (1990s through 2000s). During the first phase, shortages of health workers in developed countries triggered the development of four approaches to project future health worker requirements. We discuss each approach and show that modified versions are experiencing a resurgence in current studies estimating health worker requirements to meet population health goals, such as the United Nations’ health-related Millennium Development Goals. A perceived “cost explosion” in many health systems shifted the focus to the study of the effect of health workers’ behavior on health system efficiency during the second phase. We review the literature on one example topic: health worker licensure. In the last phase, regional health worker shortages in developing countries and local shortages in developed countries led to research on international health worker migration and programs to increase the supply of health workers in underserved areas. Based on our review of existing studies, we suggest areas for future research on the health workforce, including the transfer of existing approaches from developed to developing countries.Research perspectives, Global Health Workforce

The Effect of Population Health on Foreign Direct Investment

We conduct a panel data analysis of 74 countries over 1980 2000 to investigate whether population health affects foreign direct investment inflows. Our main finding is that health has a positive and significant effect on such inflows for low- and middle-income countries. This finding is consistent with the view that health is an integral component of human capital in developing countries.

The Wealth of Nations: Fundamental Forces Versus Poverty Traps

We test the view the large differences in income levels we see across the world are due to differences in underlying characteristics, i.e. fundamental forces, against the alternative that there are poverty traps. Taking geographical variables as fundamental characteristics, we find that we can reject fundamental forces in favor of a poverty trap model with high and low level equilibria. The high level equilibrium state is found to be the same for all countries while income in the low level equilibrium, and the probability of being in the high level equilibrium, are greater in cool, coastal countries with high, year- round, rainfall.

Universal antiretroviral treatment: the challenge of human resources

WHO’s Towards Universal Access 2009 report documents a remarkable worldwide increase in the number of people receiving antiretrviral treatment (ART) – from 3 million in 2007 to 4 million in 2008 – creating hope that with sustained energy, universal ART coverage might be achievable (1). At the same time, the report emphasizes many challenges in delivering ART on a more massive scale. One challenge – the number and types of human resources that will be required to achieve universal coverage – deserves attention from a new perspective.  In particular, we discuss the effect of feedback from current ART coverage to future ART human resources need on the sustainability of high lvels of ART coverage. But in order to think about the future, we first try to understand the past.Antiretroviral treatment, human resources