RobertaPace and RobertoHam-Chande (Eds.) Demographic Dividends: Emerging Challenges and Policy Implications Springer International, 2016. 184 p. $99.99.

Abstract

“Demographic dividend” refers to a net macro-economic boost when population age structures are weighted toward the prime working ages. Age structures with this feature are typically a transitory phenomenon during demographic transition, with the duration and magnitude of the dividend conditional on the pace of the transition (and especially the rapidity of fertility decline). This edited volume contains concise essays on various facets of the demographic dividend in seven populations: India, Latin America, Mexico, sub-Saharan Africa with global comparison, countries bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, New Zealand, and Italy. The populations differ widely in their stage of demographic transition, from early transition (sub-Saharan Africa) to post-transition (New Zealand and Italy). The seven chapters offer a mix of global, regional, and national perspectives. Four are national studies, and three of these (Mexico is the exception) emphasize sub-national differences according to administrative unit (India, Italy) or ethnic group (New Zealand). In a similar vein, the chapter on Latin America focuses on variation by sex, defining the “gender dividend” as the macro-economic gain from increased labor force participation by women (itself one common consequence of fertility decline). All of the chapters are data-rich, with numerous tables and figures, largely descriptive in character. The chapter on Mexico is distinctive in containing more formal modeling (of life-cycle savings, drawing on household survey data). A major theme throughout is that the size of the demographic dividend is conditional on human capital investment, specifically in education and health. This relatively common theme in contemporary discourse about the demographic dividend is given added force in this volume by the variation in stage of demographic transition: the requirements and payoffs from human capital investment vary considerably among populations at early, middle, and late stages of transition. Index.