Authors: Adrian C. Hayes and Zhongwei Zhao, ANU

According to UN estimates, the world’s population reached 7 billion in late 2011.

It took all of human evolution until approximately the year 1800 to reach the first 1 billion — and now we have seen an extra billion added in a mere 12 years. Read more…

Author: Gavin Jones, ANU

Thailand went through its fertility transition more quickly than almost any other country, with the average number of children born to the average woman declining from about six to two in little more than two decades, between about 1970 and 1990.

Fertility rates have since gone still lower, now standing at around 30 per cent below replacement level (the level that would lead to long-run population stability). This does not mean that Thailand’s population has stopped increasing. Read more…

Author: Peter Warr, ANU

Thailand is caught in a middle-income trap of its own creation. How did this come about?

Are current policies making it better or worse, and what needs to be done to escape the trap? Read more…

Author: Sabyasachi Tripathi, ISEC

There are many who consider urban agglomeration — the concentration of a population in a continuous urbanised area — as synonymous with a country’s engine of growth, owing to the advantage of higher productivity rates.

And this is certainly true in the case of India. Read more…

Author: Hu Shuli, Caixin Media

Asia is not without notable examples of women who have made it to the top in the political arena, but this does not mean the gap between male and female participation in politics is anywhere near being closed.

And while many women have played a pivotal role in the modern politics of various Asian countries, it would be wrong to think that the ability to reel off a list of political stars is an indicator of wider participation. Read more…

Authors: Celia Reyes and Aubrey Tabuga, PIDS

Despite the Philippine economy having enjoyed one of its best growth periods in recent years, the poverty rate continues to rise, putting a strain on achieving the Millennium Development Goal targets the country has vowed to achieve come 2015.

Inequitable growth across sectors and geographical units combined with various natural and man-made crises have produced some damaging results. Likewise, poverty-reduction programs designed without taking into account the characteristics of poverty have not helped. Read more…

There are two diametrically opposed narratives about the Chinese middle class.

In the mainstream views of what many call ‘the West’, its growth represents the inescapable sign that China is destined to converge, bend its ways and eventually become like us, adopt the universal values of our superior civilisation and finally provide us with a way to understand it in the familiar language of democracy. Read more…

Author: Huw Slater, IED

The Chinese government faces some major challenges as the country’s economy enters a transitionary period.

Chinese leaders have realised that as the country moves toward domestically-driven growth, and away from the predominance of heavy industry and exports, its social welfare system will need to be developed significantly. Read more…

Author: Kam Wing Chan, University of Washington

In the popular media and the business world, urbanisation is often cited as the fundamental driver of global economic growth, especially for the next few decades.

The assumption is that a rural–urban shift will transform poor farmers into industrial and office workers, raising their incomes and creating a massive consumer class. Read more…

Author: Sumit Ganguly, IUB

In 1950, when newly-independent India adopted a democratic constitution, it formally abolished the seemingly atavistic institution of caste.

Under the Constitution’s terms, the age-old practice of ‘untouchability’, that had helped create and sustain a hierarchical social order with religious sanction, was officially drawn to a close. Read more…

Author: Suman Bery, International Growth Centre

In the coming decade, Indian cities will grow exponentially. It is essential they are kept healthy.

More by accident than design, India’s Five Year Plans are today well synchronised with its population census. Read more…

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, EAF

Many are familiar with the demographic challenge that China faces with a very rapidly aging population over the next two decades or so, partly a result of the one-child policy.

China’s population is expected to grow from just over 1.3 billion to 1.46 billion in 2030, after which it is expected to decline slowly, to around 1.42 billion in 2050. Read more…

Authors: Zhongwei Zhao, ANU, and Wei Chen, People’s University of China

The gender imbalance in China is perhaps the most worrying demographic change that has been taking place in recent decades.

China’s sex ratio at birth (SRB), which measures the number of male live births per hundred female live births, was within the normal range of between 103 to 107 throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Read more…

Author: Homi Kharas, Brookings Institution

The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development has just celebrated its 50^th anniversary. Among the many achievements of this group of advanced economies is the unprecedented improvement in the material lives of millions of their citizens.

Between 1960 and 2010, the number of people who had middle class or better living standards in OECD member countries more than doubled from around 400 million to over 900 million. Poverty, by global standards, was essentially eradicated. Read more…

Author: Ray Hervandi, East-West Center

Indonesia’s initiation of democratic reforms in May 1998 did not portend well for Chinese Indonesians.

Constituting less than 5 percent of Indonesia’s 240 million people and concentrated in urban areas, Chinese Indonesians were, at that point, still reeling from the anti-Chinese riots that had occurred just before Suharto’s fall. Scarred by years of repression and forced assimilation under Suharto, many Chinese Indonesians were uncertain — once again — about what the ‘new’ Indonesia had in store for them. Read more…