Amit's Blog

  Part 3 – Greying and aging before it gets rich   In the 3 rd part of this series, we take a look at China. China has been the most dynamic economy on the world stage during the last 40 years. It is now the second-largest economy in the world and has largely been the growth engine for the rest of the world. During these years it has also pulled more than 500 million people out of abject poverty, a feat unparalleled in the history of the world. China has been a very strong economic performer and is set to overtake The United States during this decade. However, it is still a middle-income country with an annual per capita income of around USD 12,500. This is about 1/4 th the level of any of the developed economies. Aging is coming relatively early to China and the consequences cannot be pretty. China has a certain similarity with Japan, in the sense that it hasn’t seen large scale immigration. However, its internal distortions have been incredibly big. First, there wa...

  Part 1 – The key parameters that influence shifts Economic demography examines the determinants and consequences of demographic change, including fertility, mortality, marriage, divorce, location (urbanization, migration, density), age, gender, ethnicity, population size and population growth. Demographic dividend refers to the growth in an economy that is the result of a change in the age structure of a country's population. The change in age structure is typically brought on by a decline in fertility and mortality rates. Demographic dividend occurs when the proportion of working people in the total population is high because this indicates that more people have the potential to be productive and contribute to growth of the economy. In essence, there’s a period in nation’s progress when longevity is increasing and working age population is large in proportion to the old age population. The median age is low. This is when the nation is best positioned to move forward. In th...