China’s Demographic Dividend “already pocketed”: India will overtake it six years sooner than expected

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. | August 10, 2015

The latest UN demographic numbers are out and Gordon Chang has outlined how bleak they look for China and how much rosier for its top competitor, India.

This year’s UN estimate has India overtaking China in population by 2022, a full 6 years sooner than its last demographic iteration issued just two years ago. Chang says the turnover could be even earlier, since they are based on Beijing’s optimistic numbers.  China’s population is set to decline mostly where it matters most, that is, in the workforce.

Not only will the population be skewed toward the elderly, it will continue to suffer the social ill-effects of its massive sex imbalance due to the decades-long practice of killing baby girls. India, too, is blighted by the practice, but its robust population prospects may mask a multitude of social ills. Chang, a Forbes Asia expert, calls India’s demographic profile “close to perfect” and sums up the policy implications:

[China’s] dividend has already been pocketed, and a shrinking workforce will be wrenching for China for the rest of this century and beyond. The declining number of workers does not ensure a contracting economy, but it means Chinese leaders will have to succeed in spite of demography instead of being propelled by it.
India, on the other hand, will have a different type of challenge. It is often said that New Delhi will have to provide for its population, but that’s the wrong way of looking at the situation. In reality, all the Indian government need do is step out of the way of its ambitious, talented, and restless people, removing legal, institutional, bureaucratic, and social barriers that have impeded them since independence, in 1947.

 

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