India's new trilemma

...Kids, jobs, emigration

- AJIT BALAKRISHNAN

"Aren't you kids going to have children?" I asked one of my nieces who had come for a one-week holiday with us recently. Of course, addressing her and her husband as "kids" was a gesture of affection from me that they enjoyed as well, but they weren't kids, they were both in their mid-30s and both professionally qualified and holding good jobs in New York City.

"We think having children will only distract us from our careers, and will not do anything good for us," said my niece.

That answer sent me into a deep reverie. Wasn't India set to rule the world based on its booming number of young, working-age population? If all members of my niece's age group of Indians, the so-called "millennials", were to give up on children, what would happen to India's "demographic dividend"?

The term "demographic dividend" was coined by the Harvard economist David Bloom and his co-authors in their book by the same name in which they spelt out how the size of various age cohorts in a country determined how well or badly that country did economically. For instance, countries in which the proportion of population in the 15-64 age group is high tend to show much more vigorous economic growth than those where either under-15 or over-65 cohorts are dominant. This is because it is believed that these latter age cohorts only consume economic resources and do not participate in economically productive activities. And there is much hue and cry that India right now has the highest proportion in the 15-64 age group in the world, and thus, is set to be the leader in economic growth.