Policy Lessons of the East Asian Demographic Transition

Abstract

The usual lessons drawn from East Asia's striking experience of health and fertility transition concern the efficacy of well-designed government programs catering to an existing or ideationally stimulated demand. An alternative interpretation sees the demographic change-and the uptake of services-as a byproduct of social and economic development together with, in some cases, strong government pressures. This article probes more deeply into this experience, seeking to identify common features of development design and administration that underlay it. The broad sequence entailed, initially, establishment of an effective, typically authoritarian, system of local administration, providing (sometimes incidentally) a framework for promotion and service delivery in health, education, and family planning. Subsequent economic liberalization offered new opportunities for upward mobility-and greater risks of backsliding-but along with erosion of social capital and the breakdown or privatization of service programs. The study is mainly focused on seven countries: Taiwan and South Korea ("tiger" economies), Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia ("second wave" countries), and China and Vietnam ("market-Leninist" economies). The period is roughly from the 1960s to the 1990s. Copyright 2006 The Population Council, Inc..

Demography and public health

“…Common factors identified in poor rural populations where fertility has fallen significantly are well-established education systems, improvements in healthcare and in child survival, some form of extrafamilial welfare, well-organized local government, and an organized family planning programme. Potential benefits of investing more resources in fewer children, as a consequence of increasing opportunities in urban or industrial livelihoods, also seem to be important (McNicoll 2006;Bryant 2007). The education of women has been identified as a particularly significant influence on both falling fertility and improved infant survival (Cleland 1990;Hobcraft 1993) and female education and empowerment were recognized as key policy objectives at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (UNFPA 1995).…”

Housing deficits as a frame for housing policy: demographic change, economic crisis and household formation in Indonesia

“…Child mortality began to decline in the mid-1960s and fertility rates in the early 1970s, and both continue to fall to this day (McNicoll, 2006). A common measure of the demographic transition is the dependency ratio, which is the ratio of Downloaded by [University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)] at 10:12 16 May 2013…”

On the Causality Relationship between Demographic Changes, Economic Growth and Domestic Savings in Vietnam

“…If the working age population (active population) is high and there are more younger than elderly population, the demographic structure is more beneficial to the growth of the economy with increase in savings due to a smaller burden of the dependency population. Conversely, a high ratio of dependents in the population will cause a big burden to economic growth, thus depressing both household and domestic savings (Bloom et al 1999;McNicoll 2006;Fent et al 2008).…”