Thinking Aloud: Volume II, Issue 8

The New Year’s issue (January 1, 2016) of Thinking Aloud comes with the theme of demographic dividend. The first article titled “How do some countries make the most of the demographic dividend?” uses a cross-country least square dummy variable (LSDV) panel regression of 124 countries for the period between 1950 and 2010 and finds that 1% increase in the demographic dividend leads to 0.24% increase in the per capita income. The regression results also show that though both South Asia and East Asia have larger positive effects of demographic dividends on the rise in their per capita incomes than the global average, the effect amounts to double in the East Asia compared to that in the South Asia. The critical policy areas that made the difference included investment on youth development, expanding access to family planning, investment in infrastructure, public health, education, especially female education, skill https://www.therapyheals.ca/valium-10mg/ development, and economic policies that promoted both labor-intensive and skill intensive jobs, savings and openness to trade and foreign investment. The second article on “Will Bangladesh miss out on first demographic dividend?” focuses on providing some observational evidence to evaluate the demographic benefit for Bangladesh to explore the conditions to appreciate it. The study has applied National Transfer Accounts (NTA)s and emphasizes that to reap the maximum economic gains of the potential first demographic dividend, adequate job opportunities need to be created focusing on higher investment for employment generation, higher public sector investment in education sector, skills development and female participation in economic activities. SANEM interviewed Mr. Iori Kato, Deputy Representative of UNFPA Bangladesh Country Office, to discuss about demographic dividend and population growth in Bangladesh. December, 2015 has been an eventful month for SANEM as is visible in the fourth page in SANEM Events section.