Demographic Dividend In India

Demographic dividend

India’s Demographic Dividend stands at a historical juncture which has a potential to reap rich economic benefits in the years to come. While the whole world is aging, India has a significant advantage as 50% of our population in the working age group of 15-59 years.

With such a young population, we have a huge demographic dividend waiting to be capitalized, which has brightened the prospects of not just India but the entire world. This “demographic dividend” means that as compared to other large developing and developed countries, India has a higher proportion of working age population vis-à-vis its entire population. As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) paper “Asia and the Pacific: Managing Spillovers and Advancing

While India sees the demographic resource to aid its economic development, the world sees it as a huge market and potentially global workforce.

The critics however say that India’s demographic potential is highly overemphasized. They point to the abysmal standards of education, human development, and job creation in the country. According to them, it is not demographic dividend but a demographic disaster waiting to happen.

While the critics concerns may be genuine, none can discount the potential of India’s demographic resources. Given the strong urge of India and its current government to get over the ghosts of the past and making a new beginning, we have a 'Demographic Dividend'. In this essay on realizing India’s Demographic Dividend, we will first discuss the immense possibilities that Demographic Dividend presents and the challenges associated with

Now, other things being equal, per capita income grows more slowly and the first dividend turns negative.

Demographic Dividend in India

 Census 2011 data shows that India’s working age population (15-64 years) is now 63.4% of the total population, with only 13% of the total aged above 60 years.

 Some other notable observations from the Census data includes: a decline in ‘dependency ratio’ - the ratio of children (0-14) and the elderly (65-100) to those in the working age group and a rise in median age from around 22 years in 2001 to over 24 years in 2011.

 India is poised to become the world’s youngest country by 2020, with an average age of 29 years, and account for around 28% of the world’s workforce.

 The International Labor Organization (ILO) has predicted that by 2020, India will have 116 million workers in the work-starting age bracket of 20 to 24 years, as compared to China's 94 million. In 20 years the labor force in the industrialized world will decline by 4%, in China by 5%, while in India it will increase by