Publication: The Demography Of Youth In Developing Countries And Its Economic Implications
Loading...
Files in English
686 downloads
Published
2006
ISSN
Date
2012-06-26
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The number of young people is reaching unprecedented levels in most developing countries. In many countries, especially in East Asia and Latin America, youth populations are at or near their peak, and will decline in coming decades. In other countries, especially in Africa and South Asia, youth populations will continue growing for several decades. From an economic perspective, absolute numbers may be less important than the growth rate or relative size of youth cohorts. Growth rates and the ratio of youth to working-age population reached a peak in the 1970s or 1980s in most developing countries. The worst economic pressures of youth demography may have already occurred in many countries, although significant pressure will continue in Africa and South Asia.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Lam, David. 2006. The Demography Of Youth In Developing Countries And Its Economic Implications. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/9215 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication The Demography of Youth in Developing Countries and its Economic Implications(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-10)The number of young people is reaching unprecedented levels in most developing countries. In many countries, especially in East Asia and Latin America, youth populations are at or near their peak, and will decline in coming decades. In other countries, especially in Africa and South Asia, youth populations will continue growing for several decades. From an economic perspective, absolute numbers may be less important than the growth rate or relative size of youth cohorts. Growth rates and the ratio of youth to working-age population reached a peak in the 1970s or 1980s in most developing countries. The worst economic pressures of youth demography may have already occurred in many countries, although significant pressure will continue in Africa and South Asia.Publication A Profile Of The World's Young Developing Country Migrants(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007)The paper uses individual level census and household survey data to present a rich profile of the young developing migrants around the world. Youth are found to comprise a large share of all migrants, particularly in migration to other developing countries, with the probability of migration peaking in the late teens or early twenties. The paper examines in detail the age and gender composition of migrants, whether young migrants move alone or with a parent or spouse, their participation in schooling and work in the destination country, the types of jobs they do, and the age of return migration. The results suggest a high degree of commonality in the youth migrant experience across a number of destination countries. In particular, developing country youth tend to work in similar occupations all around the world, and are more concentrated in these occupations than older migrants or native youth. Nevertheless, there is also considerable heterogeneity among youth migrants: 29 percent of 18 to 24 year olds are attending school in their destination country, but another 29 percent are not working or in school. This illustrates both the potential of migration for building human capital, and the fear that lack of integration prevents it from being used.Publication How Are Youth Faring In The Labor Market? Evidence From Around The World(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007)This paper uses a new standardized micro database for a large set of developing countries to (1) describe the patterns of labor market outcomes for youth, and (2) explain the contributions of supply and demand factors to youth outcomes. The paper shows that youth face various difficulties in transitioning to work. This is reflected in their relatively higher unemployment rate, higher incidence of low paying or unpaid work, and a large share of youth who are neither working nor in school. This is especially true for young girls who are found outside the labor market, some engaged in home production. Finally, the paper also finds that cross-country estimates show that changes in the youth relative cohort size is unlikely to have a large effect on how youth are faring in the labor market.Publication Economic Growth, Education, and AIDS in Kenya : A Long-run Analysis(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-10)The AIDS epidemic threatens Kenya with a long wave of premature adult mortality, and thus with an enduring setback to the formation of human capital and economic growth. To investigate this possibility, the authors develop a model with three overlapping generations, calibrate it to the demographic and economic series from 1950 until 1990, and then perform simulations for the period ending in 2050 under alternative assumptions about demographic developments, including the counterfactual in which there is no epidemic. Although AIDS does not bring about a catastrophic economic collapse, it does cause large economic costs-and many deaths. Programs that subsidize post-primary education and combat the epidemic are both socially profitable-the latter strikingly so, due to its indirect effects on the expected returns to education-and a combination of the two interventions profits from a modest long-run synergy effect.Publication Implications of the Doha Market Access Proposals for Developing Countries(2011-06-01)This paper uses detailed data on bound and applied tariffs to assess the consequences of the World Trade Organization s December 2008 Modalities for tariffs levied and faced by developing countries, and the welfare implications of these reforms. The authors find that the tiered formula for agriculture would halve tariffs in industrial countries and lower them more modestly in developing countries. In non-agriculture, the formulas would reduce the tariff peaks facing developing countries and cut average industrial country tariffs by more than a third. The authors use a political-economy framework to assess the implications of flexibilities for the size of the tariff cuts and find they are likely to substantially reduce the outcome. However, despite the flexibilities, there are likely to be worthwhile gains, with applied tariffs facing developing countries cut by about 20 percent in agriculture and 27 percent in non-agriculture, and sizeable cuts in tariffs facing industrial countries. The welfare impacts of reform are evaluated using a new approach to aggregation that improves on the traditional, flawed approach of weighted-average tariffs. This substantially increases the estimated benefits of an agreement along the lines of these modalities, with estimated global income gains of up to $160 billion per year from market access reform.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Pakistan at 100(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-03-17)Pakistan has several difficult decisions to make. Despite a challenging start and a complex political history, Pakistan's economy grew fast in its earlier years, improving the lives of its citizens. Pakistan was considered an example of successful development in its first 30 years. This has since changed, and Pakistan is struggling to keep pace with the growth and transformation of its peers. Improvements in development outcomes have become slow and uneven. Pakistan@100 seeks to identify the main changes that will be necessary if Pakistan is to become a strong upper middle-income country by the time it turns 100 years old in 2047. The decisions over the next decade will determine Pakistan's future. Will Pakistan rise to the challenges ahead and transform its economy? Or will Pakistan continue with the mixed record of reform implementation, failing to address the key constraints to growth, while another generation of Pakistanis sees limited welfare improvements? This overview report together with the seven policy notes that were prepared in parallel provides a vision of the type of economy that Pakistan could have by 2047. The report illustrates the type of changes that are possible, and it discusses a limited number of priority reforms that will be necessary to address the most pressing constraints to accelerating and sustaining growth.Publication Regional Poverty and Inequality Update: Latin America and the Caribbean, October 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-23)This brief summarizes recent facts related to poverty and inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) using the latest wave of harmonized household surveys from the Socio-Economic Database for LAC (SEDLAC). This brief was produced by the Poverty Global Practice in the LAC Region of the World Bank.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Ukraine Country Environmental Analysis(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-01)The objective of the Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) is to assess the adequacy and performance of the policy, legal, and institutional framework for environmental management in Ukraine, in light of the decentralization process of environmental governance and wider reform objectives, and to provide recommendations to government to address the key gaps identified. Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe and has a population of 43 million, the majority of whom live in urban areas. It is a lower middle income country, with the services, industry and agriculture sectors being main contributors to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Ukraine faces a number of environmental challenges, as identified in its National Environmental Strategy 2020 (NES). Key among these are: air pollution; quality of water resources and land degradation; solid waste management; biodiversity loss; human health issues associated with environmental risk factors; in addition to climate change. The scope of Ukrainian environmental legislation is quite broad and comprehensive (more than 300 legal acts) and covers most areas of environmental protection and natural resources management. However, the environmental legislation faces a number of weaknesses:The environmental legislation is largely declaratory in nature and does not have all the essential enforcement mechanisms for the implementation of legal acts and international agreements; Many of the acts are not coordinated with each other; and Legislation undergoes limited analysis of its impact—for example, no in-depth analysis such as Regulatory Impact Analysis is conducted for proposed pieces of legislation.Publication Thailand Monthly Economic Monitor, October 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-22)Fiscal conditions remained stable, with a modest widening of the deficit to 3.1 percent of GDP. New stimulus measures are expected to support short-term demand without breaching the public debt ceiling. Inflation stayed negative, reflecting lower energy and food prices amid subdued domestic demand. The central bank kept the policy rate unchanged, citing limited policy space. Thailand’s growth momentum has slowed further as manufacturing activity and services weakened as projected. Tourism remained subdued, largely due to fewer Chinese visitors. Goods exports also slowed as earlier front-loaded orders faded, particularly in agriculture and industrial goods. The Thai baht depreciated in early October as the US dollar appreciated and the current account turned negative.