Demographic Dividend

This paper looks to uncover the growth traps and opportunities for the South African economy, with a focus on underlying labour market dynamics. We explore the potential of South Africa’s demographic dividend. We also consider the structure of the labour market and the growth-employment interactions, which uncover the skills-biased labour demand path of the economy and a rising trend in the use of labour brokers to source temporary workers. Finally, we show a new labour market trend has emerged: a rise in the share of public sector employment along with higher conditional returns to public sector workers than to those in the private sector.

Asia Pacific (APAC)* is the fastest ageing region in the world with more than 200 million people expected to move into the ranks of the elderly (aged 65 years and above) between now and 2030. This represents an increase of 71 percent in the number of elderly people, compared to increases of 55 percent in North America and 31 percent in Europe over the same period.
Driven by improving socio-economic conditions and increasing life-expectancy, the speed at which societies in APAC are ageing poses an unprecedented challenge. For comparison, Singapore’s elderly population will rise from 11 to 20 percent in the next 15 years, while it took France 49 years to do the same. By 2030, Japan will become the world’s first “ultra-aged” nation, with the elderly accounting for more than 28 percent of the population, while Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan will be considered “super-aged”, with more than 21 percent.
Many APAC countries are moving from a period when they reaped a “demographic dividend” to one where they face the prospect of paying a “demographic tax”. Such a significant demographic shift will be accompanied by a host of financial and socio-economic risks affecting multiple stakeholders, as shown in Exhibit A. Consequently, there is an urgent need to evaluate each country’s readiness to manage increasingly aged societies and to develop solutions that mitigate the associated risks. This report takes a deeper look into the impact of societal ageing on elderly healthcare costs in APAC.