The relationship between population changes and economic growth
has been debated since Malthus. Initially focusing on population
growth, the notion of demographic dividend has shifted the
attention to changes in age structures with an assumed window
of opportunity that opens when falling birth rates lead to a relatively
higher proportion of the working-age population. This has become
the dominant paradigm in the field of population and development,
and an advocacy tool for highlighting the benefits of family planning
and fertility decline. While this view acknowledges that the dividend
can only be realized if associated with investments in human capital,
its causal trigger is still seen in exogenous fertility decline. In
contrast, unified growth theory has established human capital as a
trigger of both demographic transition and economic growth. We
assess the relative importance of changing age structure and
increasing human capital for economic growth for a panel of 165
countries during the time period of 1980-2015. The results show a
clear dominance of improving education over age structure and give
evidence that the demographic dividend is driven by human capital.
Declining youth dependency ratios even show negative impacts on
income growth when combined with low education. Based on a
multidimensional understanding of demography that considers education
in addition to age, and with a view to the additional effects of
education on health and general resilience, we conclude that the
true demographic dividend is a human capital dividend. Global population
policies should thus focus on strengthening the human resource
base for sustainable development.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VIENNA/oai:epub.wu-wien.ac.at:6984 |
| Date | 06 1900 |
| Creators | Lutz, Wolfgang, Crespo Cuaresma, Jesus, Kebede, Endale Birhanu, FĂĽrnkranz-Prskawetz, Alexia, Sanderson, Warren, Striessnig, Erich |
| Publisher | The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine |
| Source Sets | Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, PeerReviewed |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) |
| Relation | https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/06/07/1820362116, http://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1820362116/-/DCSupplemental, http://epub.wu.ac.at/6984/ |
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