Age structural transitions and Millennium Development Goals in South Asia

Kannan Navaneetham, Centre for Development Studies
Arunachalam Dharmalingam, Monash University

South Asian Countries have undergone remarkable changes in demographic, social, economic and environmental factors. In particular, rapid demographic changes in these countries invoked age structural transition and it created different opportunities and challenges. As the South Asian countries are diversified with respect to demographic, socio-economic changes, the consequences of age structural transition would vary in context. Moreover, progress in the MDGs in these countries is rather slow and it has raised uncertainty to achieve the goals before 2015- a date set in the UN Millennium declaration. The success of the strategies and programmes aimed at achieving the MDGs is highly dependent on the demographic context. The aim of this paper is to make situational analysis about the progress of MDGs in the South Asian countries and to examine the role of the demographic factors, in particular age structural transition would play in achieving the MDGs in these countries.