Decomposing economic gains from population age structure transition in the Philippines

The secular decline in fertility throughout the world has provided countries with demographic dividends from population age structures that are increasingly concentrated towards productive ages. However, it is widely recognized that realizing the demographic dividend is policy dependent. In this paper, we document how economic conditions are able to either negate or amplify the gains from demographic dividends by looking at the case of the Philippines in separate periods of boom and bust. Recent evidence suggests that the Philippines has been benefitting from a favorable population age structure transition. It is expected, however, that the experience is not uniform among different population groups in the country. Some population groups are farther along in the demographic transition while others lag behind given the documented differentials in their fertility levels. Additionally, different groups could have different economic lifecycle schedules. We analyze how different population groups contributed to the overall economic growth experienced by the Philippines over different economic conditions in the past two decades.