Fertility, mortality, and economic development: An analysis of 201 countries during 1960-2010 (Qingfeng Li, Li Liu, Amy Tsui, and Saifuddin Ahmed)
Rapid reductions in fertility and mortality during the past half-century triggered a major shift to a favorable population age structure in many countries, which has proven to be conducive to economic development. Countries with a high proportion of working-age population are better able to use their human resources for economic development due to reduced expenditures related to caring for children. The efficient utilization of the economic opportunities that result from a favorable demographic transition is known as the Demographic Dividend. Changes in both fertility and mortality have impacts on the population age structure. Our aim is to estimate the contribution of the change in the dependency ratio of the non-working-age population (younger than 15 and older than 64 years) to the working-age population (15-64) from the decline of each component of demographic transition, fertility and mortality, during the past half century.
Qingfeng Li is a Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the United States. Amy Tsui is a Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the United States.