SHAPING THE FUTURE HOW CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS CAN POWER HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

TABLE 1.1:
Asia-Pacific still has large portions of people living in multidimensional poverty
Source: UNDP 2014.
22
to provide for their needs. In South Asia, over
half of people in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and
India lived in multidimensional poverty in 2010,
compared to only 2 percent in the Maldives. 15
In East Asia and the Pacific, multidimensional
poverty is most severe in Timor-Leste, affecting
over 64 percent of the population, and lowest
in Thailand, at only 1 percent.
THE WORLD’S MOST
POPULOUS REGION: A
MAJOR TRANSITION IS
UNDERWAY
Home to 4.1 billion people in 2015, living at
widely diverse stages of human development,
Asia-Pacific is the most populous region in
the world. 16 Around 56 percent of the world’s
people live there, although the region occupies
only about 23 percent of the earth’s land. 17 Population
size has tripled in the last 65 years, and
is expected to reach 4.84 billion in 2050. 18 Six
of the world’s 10 most populous countries are
located in the region—China, India, Indonesia,
Pakistan, Bangladesh and Japan—the first three
alone account for 40 percent of all people alive
today. 19 The region also has some of the least
populous countries, such as Tokelau with 1,250
people, Niue with 1,610 people and Tuvalu with
9,916 people.
Asia-Pacific has been described as a ‘demographic
explosion region’, although a high
population growth rate of about 3.2 percent in
the second half of the 20th century has significantly
slowed since 2000 (Box 1.2). Today, the
rate hovers at about 1 percent, lower than the
global average of 1.2 percent, and is expected
to fall to 0.46 percent in the next four decades.
Already, the slowdown is evident in almost
all subregions, with variations. Annual
population growth in East Asia is expected
to shrink to -0.4 percent from 2015 to 2050,
while rates in South-east and South Asia will
likely descend to around 0.3 percent. Growth is
currently highest in the Pacific subregion, but
is also slowing, probably reaching 0.9 percent
during the same period.
In the future, over three-fourths of the
increase in Asia-Pacific’s population will likely
occur in South Asia, where total population
will rise by 600 million by 2050. In East Asia,
meanwhile, the population will probably remain
largely unchanged or decline, shifting its
regional share from 48 percent in 1970 to only
34 percent by 2050. By then, almost half of the
region’s people will reside in South Asia.
To a large extent, China and India, now
home to 2.6 billion people, will drive demographic
changes in the region and influence
their consequences. India’s population will likely