High-Income Asia: Lessons in Population and Economy

This book focuses on the high-income Asia that experienced fast economic growth and rapid demographic change in recent decades. High-income Asia includes Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, according to the World Bank’s category classification. These economies enjoyed a brief period of brilliant economic growth but then faced a demographic shift, with the lowest fertility in the world.

For example, Japan today must confront difficult challenges such as how to balance childbirth and childcare with women’s employment as its population rapidly ages—a consequence that was hardly foreseen in the process of economic growth. The changing landscape is different at each stage of the process, and the issues related to economic growth cannot be clearly recognized before or during that growth. Therefore, as a reference for the future of developing countries, this book aims to provide positive and negative lessons, learned from high-income Asia’s experiences in high-speed economic growth and demographic changes.

First, it gives an overview of the rapid economic growth and demographic changes in high-income Asia over the past several decades. Then, among the challenges following economic growth, it focuses on two points: 1) how to balance childbirth and childcare with women’s employment; and 2) how to respond to the anticipated labor shortage in the future. The former issue requires a delicate balance between preventing fertility decline and supporting women's employment. Here, a comparison among Japan, Taiwan and Korea is made. The latter question focuses primarily on Japan as the fastest-aging population in the world, with additional reference to parts of high-income Asia other than Japan, which also are aging. Based on analyses of these major points, the author discusses the policy implications for developing countries learned from the tough lessons of high-income Asia.