World faces paradox over demography

Population growth set to vary widely among subregions, especially in Asia

As the international community observes this year's World Population Day on July 11, policymakers across the world, especially in Asia, face a demographic paradox.

The United Nations estimates the global population may hit 9.7 billion in 2050 from the present 7.7 billion. However, a wide discrepancy among subregions is apparent across the world.

Southern Asia and Africa are struggling with providing jobs for growing numbers of young people as a result of high fertility rates, but East Asia, Europe and elsewhere are confronted with rapid aging that can pressure their resources and public services.

The ramifications of this divergent demographic trend may threaten the regions' economic gains and the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, analysts noted. The 17 goals include eradication of extreme poverty, halting deforestation and promotion of gender equality.

Sivananthi Thanenthiran, executive director of the Kuala Lumpur-based Asia-Pacific Resource and Research Center for Women, said meeting the UN goals is crucial for Asian countries with a huge youth population. Such "sizable youth power" needs quality education, skills and job opportunities.

The United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, said that while the total fertility rate for Asia is close to the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman, the East Asian fertility rate is 1.7 and South Asia's is 2.5.

According to the UNFPA, the Asia-Pacific region has nearly 1 billion young people aged 10 to 24. More than half of these young Asians live in China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In most "young" countries, youth unemployment is a problem and faster development can ease the pain.

In contrast, East Asians face a different problem: falling birthrates and a growing share of elderly people.

According to the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, or ESCAP, more than 12 percent of the Asian population are 60 years or older. This is projected to rise to more than 20 percent by 2050. In East Asia, over 30 percent of the population is expected to be 60 years or older by 2050.

Peter Mcdonald, professor at the School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne in Australia, said having fewer children has served East Asian countries well. Parents with one to two children were able to invest in quality education and produced a more skilled work force.

Apart from lower birthrates, the ESCAP said the improved living standards and access to healthcare and nutrition has also boosted the number of the elderly.

But the aging pace in Asia is faster and happening at a much earlier stage of development compared to more industrialized economies.

It took France 115 years and the United States 69 years to move from an aging to an aged society, according to ESCAP. This contrasts with Japan, which only had 24 years of aging before it became an aged society in 1994. China is expected to make the transition in 25 years, while Singapore in 22 years.

'Nice big dividend'

East Asian policymakers did not anticipate that birthrates would fall to such low rates. Mcdonald noted that these countries enjoyed a "nice big dividend in short term (but will have a) big problem in future".

Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, deputy director of the Center for Family and Population Research at the National University of Singapore, said policymakers in the region need to take note on how to ensure the elderly's health and financial security.

"How will people support themselves at old age, especially if they don't work? They also need long-term care because as people live longer, those added years may not be healthy years," she said.

Moreover, developing Asia has to tackle another burden of their young women besides joblessness: the lack of family planning policies and cultural bias against women's reproductive health.

"Never-married women, including adolescents and young women, have a great disadvantage in obtaining contraceptives largely due to stigma attached to being sexually active before marriage," Thanenthiran said.

She cited this year's World Population Day theme which focuses on the progress made after the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo, Egypt. Participants to the 1994 conference recognized that reproductive health and gender equality are essential for achieving sustainable development.

Thanenthiran said most women in South and Southeast Asia still struggle with unwanted pregnancy and forced marriages. She said that 63 percent of the adolescent pregnancies in Asia are unplanned.

"People need to recognize that women have to understand and have control over their reproductive health," said Junice Melgar, executive director of the Manila-based Likhaan Center for Women's Health.

Melgar said that sex education and access to contraceptives are important in order to reduce high adolescent fertility rate that usually push women to drop out from school and remain jobless and poor.

Karl Wilson in Sydney contributed to the story.