As I was saying in another thread, which country is poorer, Japan? Or India and Nigeria? Demographic dividend my foot. In the next two decades, India is going to find it increasingly difficult to find jobs for all those unskilled labours coming onto the labour market. And this will add drag to the economy.
As my tutor tells me when I was an economic students. All the demographic dividend does at best, is to increase GDP at the national level. Which should push India into the "big boy league" with China and USA. It brings prestige and maybe military poweress. But it adds nothing to the ordinary folks daily living standards.
The only way to increase the average persons utilities is to increase their income via GDP per capita. And here my tutor says the SOLOW economic model is where is at. The SOLOW model suggest GDP per capita, and individual utilities can only be increase via technological advances.
So this demographic dividends is really a nonsense. I mean, what's the common features of all these low income countries? Large illiterate population.
Totally agree gateway.
90% of India's workforce is already in the informal sector getting by the gig of the day/hour or having a vegetable stand on the street. The amount of economics activity/growth from the informal sector is basically nothing. So these people is actually a hindrance to the GDP/capita. Illiterate and malnourished population is a huge hindrance to a modern economy.
People in china only complain about too many people, never too few people. If the population drops, it's great, less competition for school and work positions.
If you look at japan, it's economy is holding steady, only 0.1% growth. But who cares, the population is dropping, so that means per capita, it's getting richer.
A population divident is ONLY a divident if it is a healthy, well educated, and disciplined population. A market is only a valuable market if it's big and rich. India is big, but not rich. Japan is rich, but not big. China is almost rich, but big.
People always say China's growth slowed down, they all failed elementary math. China's 6% growth last year is greater than the 14% growth 15 years ago on absolute dollar terms. It is decelerating but actually growth faster.
