Demographic Dividend in East and South Asia, The Economic Impact of Changes Age Structure in Population.

Abstract: The demographic transition of declining of mortality and fertility, causes changes in age structure of the population, provide countries a generation that is proportionately bigger than the predecessors and their successors. A greater share of population that is in the working age, gives the opportunities of economic growth in a country is called demographic dividend. The bulk working age population is expected to faster economic growth, boost labor supply, increase physical capital and expand human development due to transitional favorable dependency ratio. The aim of the paper is to examine, the nature of the effects of changes age structure on the Gross Domestic Products in the pre dividend period and dividend periods of the ten countries of East and South Asia. The changes age structure directly associated with the labor force and there is a good association between labor supply (support ratio) and human capital as well as physical capital in our study data. We have evaluated the impact of these three mechanisms on the economic growth of the countries of the East and South Asia, 1960-2006.The results show that the effect of labor supply (support ratio), human capital (life expectation and schooling) and physical capital (total trade) is positively significant on the GDP per capita .The results also show that the effect of changes age structure on the GDP is higher in the demographic dividend periods than pre-dividend period.