SHAPING THE FUTURE HOW CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS CAN POWER HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
IMPROVES RAPIDLY,
BUT UNEVENLY, ACROSS
ASIA-PACIFIC
Human Development Index (HDI) values—
which reflect achievements in income, education
and health—have steadily risen in all
regions in the world. Globally, between 1990
and 2014, more than 2 billion people rose above
low levels of human development; more than
a billion escaped extreme poverty. 3 Most live
in Asia-Pacific, although the current state of
human development in the region as a whole
presents a mixed picture.
Among developing regions worldwide, South
Asia has made the fastest human development
progress with an average annual growth rate
in HDI values of 1.4 percent compared to the
world average of 0.7 percent in the last 25 years.
It is followed by East Asia and the Pacific with
a rate of 1.3 percent. 4 Despite such impressive
progress, however, both subregions still lag
behind Latin America and the Caribbean, and
Europe and Central Asia. South Asia is also
behind the Arab States (Figure 1.1).
Among 36 Asia-Pacific countries and territories
with available data, 5 18 have high or very
high HDI values, 12 countries have medium
values, and 6 countries have low values. 6 In
recent decades, many least developed countries
in Asia-Pacific—Afghanistan, Bangladesh,
Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic,
Myanmar and Nepal—have made the most
rapid progress on human development, albeit
from a lower base. Between 2009 and 2014, 20
Asia-Pacific countries witnessed an improvement
BOX 1.1:
Major global agreements link population and development
In 1994, the International Conference on Population
and Development, held in Cairo, explicitly
drew attention—for the first time—to the dynamic
relationship between population and development.
Its Programme of Action advocated “appropriate
policies to meet the needs of current generations
without compromising the ability of future generations
to meet their own needs” (UNFPA 2014b,
paragraph 3.1). It called for investing in individual
human rights, capabilities and dignity throughout
the human lifetime.
More recently, at the 2012 United Nations Conference
on Sustainable Development, governments
globally committed to “seize the opportunities and
address the challenges associated with demographic
change” (United Nations 2012c, paragraph
144). In 2014, at the 20-year review of the Cairo
conference, they overwhelmingly supported an
action plan “safeguarding the rights of young people
and investing in their quality education, decent
employment opportunities, effective livelihood
skills and access to sexual and reproductive health”
(UNFPA 2014c, executive summary).
The international community in 2015 affirmed, in
Agenda 2030, a set of Sustainable Development
Goals and targets that incorporate population elements.
The SDGs come at a time when Asia-Pacific
countries are experiencing powerful population
shifts, including continued population growth,
youth bulges, ageing and significant changes
associated with migration, urbanization and family
dynamics. These issues have many implications for
the achievement of the SDGs by their agreed 2030
endpoint. Demographic patterns affect almost all
of the priorities in the goals, including economic
growth, labour markets, income distribution, poverty,
social protection, pensions, health, education,
gender equality, food security, energy, environmental
protection, and climate change mitigation
and adaptation.
Demographic changes played an important role in
the success of East Asia’s ‘tiger’ economies. Other
Asia-Pacific countries now have a similar historic
opportunity to leverage demographics for human
development, and to guide development to exert
positive impacts on demographics. By anticipating
and planning for the changes ahead, all countries
can address challenges and harness opportunities
to realize greater human well-being and contribute
to a more sustainable world.
South Asia has made
the fastest recent
human development
progress, but lags
behind many regions
of the world
Sources: UNFPA 2014b, United Nations 2015a, United Nations 2012c, UNFPA 2014c.
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