State of World Population 2012 - Country Page List - UNFPA

gender equality is much stronger and more
direct at the household level than the microeconomic
level or the macroeconomic level.
But the individual and household impacts
of family planning services—lower fertility,
improved health, decreased mortality, greater
investment in human capital, greater participation
in the labour force and increased
income and savings—also scale up at the more
aggregate levels of communities and countries.
These macro-level effects are sometimes difficult
to identify because these variables are
interrelated and are influenced by an enormous
number of additional variables such as
the institutional environment, the influence of
policy, wars and other major social, economic
and political events. Though conclusive evidence
of the magnitude of the relationships
does not yet exist, some areas of consensus
have emerged.
One such area of consensus among economists,
demographers and policymakers is
recognition of the role of population age structures
in economic development. Declines in
fertility initially reduce the share of a country’s
population that is young. For some time, the
initial decline in the youth population that is
dependent others for their basic needs is not
offset by increases in the share of the population
that is older and dependent on others. At
this point in the demographic transition, the
relative size of a country’s working-age population
increases. This one-time increase in the
proportion of the working-age population that
coincides with a one-time decrease in “dependency
ratios” creates favorable conditions
for economic development and is called the
“demographic dividend.”
At the macroeconomic level, the demographic
transition reduces a number of challenges
in countries that cannot easily keep up with
investing in health and education of a large and
rapidly growing youth population, and managing
an essentially unlimited supply of labour.
The demographic dividend also provides countries
with opportunities to increase labour force
participation, income, saving, investment, and
social change, if policies are in place to invest
in the human capital of this young group (via
higher per-capita spending on health and
education, greater investment in physical
infrastructure and institutional development,
and support for civic participation, among
other things).
“After fertility rates steadily decline over the course of
20 or 30 years, the number of income-generating adults
grows relative to the number people who depend on them
for support, thus creating more favourable conditions for
economic growth and sustainable development.”
Demographic dividends have been observed
in East and Southeast Asia, Latin America, the
Middle East and North Africa, and the Pacific
Islands (Lee et al., 2010; Lee, 2003; Lee et al.,
2001; Mason and Lee, 2004; Lee and Mason,
2006; Bloom et al., 2009; Schultz, 2009). The
dividend began in East Asia in the 1970s, in
South Asia in the 1980s and in sub-Saharan
Africa in the new millennium.
Macro-level impact of family planning on
savings, investment and growth
Dependency ratios and the demographic
dividend can affect economies and societies in
numerous ways. In early stages of the demographic
transition—when the share of the
population that is young starts to grow—countries
may be required to spend more on schools,
health clinics, housing, and other infrastructure
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