Tag:GS 2 || Governance & Social Justice || Human Development || Population

Context

• India enters 37 year period of Demographic dividend.
• It is a perfect opportunity for India to make most out of this and emerge as global power in all aspects. Many emerging economies have undergone this phase.

Population Pyramids:

These are the structures which shows age and sex distribution of any country. It helps us to understand how demographic transition plays out medium term economic prospects.

• The population is distributed along the horizontal axis
• Males are shown on the left and females on the right.
• The male and female populations are broken down into 5-year age groups represented as horizontal bars (Cohorts) along the vertical axis, with the youngest age groups at the bottom and the oldest at the top.

India Vs China

Inferences From the Pyramids

• In India Oldest Group Male, Female ratio is balanced than Youngest Group.
• India’s young age group have stopped growing in number.
• India has larger proportions of teenager and Young adults than China.
• China has largest cohort at 40 age group.
• In the 25-65 age Group we can make the following observations :

India will have 170 Million more Younger Age group i.e working group than China in 2040.

Demographic Dividends

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), defines demographic dividend as, “the economic growth potential that can result from shifts in a population’s age structure, mainly when the share of the working-age population (15 to 64) is larger than the non-working-age share of the population (14 and younger, and 65 and older)”.

Advantages

• Demographic dividend opportunity in India is available for five decades from 2005-06 to 2055-56, longer than any other country in the world.
• According to International Monetary Fund (IMF), India’s continuing demographic dividend can add about 2 percent to the annual rate of economic growth, if harnessed properly.
• Increased Labour Force: It helps to increase the total output of the economy.
• Increased Fiscal space: created by the demographic dividend to divert resources from spending on children to investing in physical and human infrastructure.
• Rise in Women Workforce: As fertility rate is reducing it leads to more involvement of the women in the Labour Force.
• Rise in Savings rate: Saving rate increases as the number of Working group increases which helps in better investments.
• A massive shift towards middle class society: Rise of aspirational class.

What needs to be done to Achieve Demographic dividend

• More Investments in Human capital and infrastructure.
• Investments in health and sanitation have to be sustained and more PPP models in the field of education have to be explored.
• Urbanization: We should build better urban infrastructure as more and more people come to cities in search of jobs
• Skill Development: Youth should be trained in order to cope up with the structural changes i.e New technologies.

Education: More emphasis must be given to Practical based education. Curriculum should be updated regularly to maintain relevance.