Narrow Results

Developing Asia has grown faster than other parts of the world for decades. However, population aging is expected to pose significant headwinds to the region’s future economic growth. We update and enhance the analysis of Park and Shin (2012) to project the impact of population aging on developing Asia’s growth between 2021 and 2050. Our projections indicate that a demographic transition will have a substantial negative effect on the region’s future growth, but the effect varies across economies. Older economies will suffer a demographic tax, whereas younger economies will continue to enjoy a positive but declining demographic dividend.

This paper examines trends in women's labor force participation, sectoral and occupational distribution, and wage incomes relative to men, including by age and education. Since 1980, gender disparities in virtually all categories have substantially narrowed; those remaining result from women's continued disproportionate responsibility for family care, and additional factors affecting women at the highest levels of the labor force and income distribution. There are some areas of concern for women's economic future in Singapore, including the impacts of ageing, foreign labor and immigration, and wage stagnation experienced by low-income families under Singapore's economic development model.

Based on the multi-regional input-output framework, this paper analyzed the labor and energy transfer embodied in interregional trade in China. Meanwhile, through estimating the energy intensity per unit of labor embodied in final products in each region, this study examines whether the empirical results are consistent with the theoretical hypothesis and provides relevant explanations and industrial development suggestions. Results show that east coastal region and central region are the two main participants in interregional trade. As for the labor embodied in trade, east coastal region is the largest exporter of embodied labor, though it has the highest wage among eight regions; in contrast, north coastal and southwestern region, with relatively low wage, are the two largest importer of embodied labor. As for the energy embodied in trade, northwestern region is the largest exporter of embodied energy. Further analysis indicates that the energy intensity per unit of labor in region with relatively low GRP (such as northwestern region) is the highest, whereas those in Beijing-Tianjin Region and south coastal region (with relatively high GRP) are the lowest. By analyzing the Revealed Comparative Advantage in each region, the paper finds that the main reason for this inconsistency lies in the industrial structure in northwestern and north coastal region, which are highly dependent in primary industries. Improving the infrastructure and upgrading industrial structure are important steps for these regions to transform the extensive growth mode.