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MEDIA CENTER Population and Economic Change in East Asia
NEW YORK (24 January 2001) — As countries move through the demographic transition from high to low fertility rates, they undergo economic, social, and institutional changes that are part cause and part consequence of changing population dynamics. A new book, a supplement to the Population Council journal Population and Development Review, examines the demographic transition in East Asia, where a number of countries have seen their fertility levels drop from five or six children per family to an average of two or below. These fertility declines, combined with ongoing falls in mortality rates, have a distinctive sequence of effects on age structures. There is an initial rise, then a substantial lowering of child-dependency ratios. Later, there is a rapid aging of populations—underway through most of the region. In between is a long period of highly favorable age distributions, known as the "demographic gift," with low and falling total dependency ratios. The story of East Asian development has much to do with the interplay between these economic and demographic trends. Economic growth is a major factor pushing the demographic transition. But the influence also goes in the other direction: when fertility starts to fall, economies are for a time greatly advantaged by the "demographic gift" of a labor force growing faster than the numbers of young or old. Then inevitably, the age-dynamics of low fertility curtail this effect, replacing it with a growing problem of old-age support. This volume presents an analytical discussion of important aspects of the East (including Southeast) Asian experience. It is novel in treating population aging as an integral part of the demographic transition. The first of the book's 11 chapters describes the demographic transition in the region and its causes, including the role of family planning programs. Subsequent chapters consider the interaction of fertility decline with increasing education, and assess the general impact of the transition on economic growth. Several chapters analyze in depth the institutional and behavioral response to the aging stage of the transition. A final chapter focuses on the implications for future social policy in a now-developed Asia and further afield. C. Y. Cyrus Chu is Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. Ronald Lee is Professor in the Departments of Demography and Economics, University of California at Berkeley. To order a copy, call 212/339-0514, fax 212/755-6052, email publications@popcouncil.org, or order on-line.
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