Demographic Change and Economic Growth in Asia

By David E. Bloom, J. Finlay. 2009

449 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper examines the links between demographic change and economic growth in Asia during 1965-90. We show that the overall rate of population growth had little effect on economic growth, but that changes in life expectancy, age structure, and population density have had a significant impact on growth rates. We also find strong evidence of feedback from higher income to population change via lower fertility, though a significant component of the demographic changes appears to have been exogenous. Our results suggest that the demographic transition can act both as a catalyst and as an accelerator mechanism, and that demographic effects can explain most of East Asia’s economic "miracle". East Asia benefited from a "virtuous spiral" of income growth and fertility decline, while South Asia seems to remain caught in a low-level population-income trap.

Subfields: Demography, Economics and Econometrics, General Health Professions

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6c7fcab292b242f31b0ff45278e8e4d382a6b734

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Citations in the corpus

Growth slowdowns and the middle-income trap (2013, background): “Bloom, Canning, and Malaney (2000) and Mason (2001) find that East Asia’s “economic miracle” was associated with a major transition in age structure.”
Fertility, female labor force participation, and the demographic dividend (2009, unknown): “Rising female participation rates due to fertility reductions may therefore have contributed significantly to the growth “miracles” in Asia and Ireland, which were in part driven by rising labor inputs (Bloom and Canning 2003; Bloom et al. 2000; Young 1995).”
Does age structure forecast economic growth (2007, unknown): “Bloom, Canning, and Malaney (2000), Bloom, Canning, and Sevilla (2003), and Bloom and Canning (2003) emphasize that labor supply and aggregate output are closely tied to the size of the working age population.”
Population Aging and Economic Growth (2008, background): “Bloom and Williamson (1998), and Bloom, Canning, and Malaney (2000) estimate that this “demographic dividend” explains up to one third of East Asia’s economic miracle between 1965 and 1990.”