The Demographic Dividend: A Potential Surplus Generated by a Demographic Transition

Abstract

The Demographic Dividend (DD) is currently one of the most scrutinized issues in the field of development studies. The key question is whether sub-Saharan Africa is going to experience a DD in the near future. Some forecast an imminent DD and focus on what should be done by the sub-Saharan African countries to reap its maximum benefits. Others are less optimistic, and focus on what should be done to ensure that a DD could effectively happen. However, in both cases, most authors do not take time to explain what the DD is. And when they do, they define the DD by its formative process, but fail to explain what the DD is made of. In this chapter, we first attempt to provide a detailed and exhaustive definition of the DD, knowing that this “phenomenon” is economic by nature but generated by a demographic process, i.e., a demographic transition. In the second part, we discuss the probability that a DD will occur in sub-Saharan Africa in the near future. Our findings show that the window of opportunity is not ready to open up in two of the three sub-Saharan regions of this study. Unless these regions implement several drastic changes in the near future, the sub-Saharan African DD will never have the size, and therefore the impact, of its East Asian equivalent.