SHAPING THE FUTURE HOW CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS CAN POWER HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

with ministries overseeing youth, education,
technology and foreign affairs. Success depends
largely on a shared vision, adequate resources
and seamless coordination. As the 2015 global
Human Development Report recommends,
this process must aim for equal access to new
technologies, and be geared towards equipping
people to seize opportunities in the changing
world of work, including through the updating
of skills through their lives.
Protect workers’ rights and safety. The Sustainable
Development Goals call for protecting
labour rights, and promoting safe and secure
working environments for all workers. Protections
should cover all sectors of employment, in
rural or urban areas, and apply to all migrants.
Priorities include progressive formalization
of informal sector employment, expanding
social protection, establishing and enforcing a
minimum wage to eliminate working poverty,
adopting legal guarantees of workers’ rights
backed by processes to uphold them, eliminating
child labour and any other practices that violate
human rights, and setting and implementing
basic workplace health and safety standards.
Stimulate small and medium enterprises.
These are responsible for two-thirds of total
employment in Asia-Pacific, and are vital for
inclusive growth. Helping them expand in size
and number will be essential to responding to a
growing workforce. Much depends on boosting
their relatively small shares in trade and limited
access to finance, among other serious obstacles
to growth. Other assistance could encompass
expanding market access, enhanced use of appropriate
technology, and easing disincentives to
enter the formal sector, such as excessive business
regulations and minimum capital requirements.
One-stop service centres could provide assistance
with managing formalization, but also advisory,
training and other services on issues related to
establishing and sustaining a smaller enterprise.
Countries could also support these businesses
through enhancing the skills of people
involved, establishing development banks or
designing loan guarantee schemes, offering
fiscal incentives, providing market support
and regulation, and supporting research and
development, among other measures.
Promote structural transformation and greater
productivity. Economies with large working-age
populations need to shift from mainly low-productivity
agricultural activities to high-productivity
activities in other sectors in order to improve
competitiveness and stimulate productivity.
Malaysia provides an example, as it successfully
transformed from a traditional plantation-based
economy to a sophisticated manufacturing and
services economy within a generation.
To help the process along, policy makers
need to promote entry into regional and global
value chains, and broader regional economic
integration. A conducive environment depends
on incentives for research and innovation, expanded
skills training, the diffusion of new
technology and investment in infrastructure,
among other avenues.
Policies, regulations, institutions and progressive
workplace practices can be geared towards
equipping enterprises to improve productivity
and remain competitive. Workplace
practices include good working conditions, continual
learning, sound labour and management
relations, and respect for workers’ rights. Linking
wages more robustly to productivity will ensure
that both labourers and entrepreneurs share the
benefits of productivity growth.
Mobilize savings and channel them into productive
uses. The extent to which a country realizes
its demographic dividend depends in part on how
well it mobilizes savings and channels them into
improved productivity and human well-being,
such as can be gained through investing in essential
infrastructure for education, health, roads,
ports, electrical grids, water systems, and so on.
One key element is ensuring that people
have mechanisms to accumulate wealth for old
age, including through safe and readily accessible
instruments for saving. A large portion
of Asia-Pacific’s savings is currently invested
outside the region, given the shortage within
the region of long-term financing instruments.
Expanding these has tremendous potential. More
developed bond markets, for instance, could
build on lessons from successes in Malaysia,
Republic of Korea and Singapore.
In low-income countries, banks are still the most
important source of financing; many remain
state-owned. Reforms could improve the allo-
An employmentoriented
growth
strategy is essential
for achieving a
demographic dividend
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