Demographic transition and economic growth in China, India and Pakistan

The authors of this paper adopt a Solow-Swan model extended to include demographic variables to analyze the overall effect of demographic transition on economic growth. The results, based on data from seventy countries over the period 1961-2003, reveal that GDP per capita growth is positively related to the growth differential between the working-age population and the total population, and negatively related to child and old-age dependency ratios. Based on these results, they find that population dynamics explain 46 percent of economic growth in per capita GDP in China over the period 1961-2003, 39 percent in India, and 25 percent in Pakistan. Furthermore, population dynamics are expected to have a positive effect on economic growth in India and Pakistan over the period 2005-2050, and a negative effect in China.