Does India Risk Getting Old Before It Gets Rich?

The country hopes that its young workforce will drive its march to a high-income status, but it's a race against time as the population ages and growth tapers.

- Debarshi Dasgupta

Most think of India as a young country, and rightly so. It is a country where more than half of the population is below the age of 30 and this youthful workforce is helping grow the nation's wealth. But what is not acknowledged fully is how this demographic dividend is dissipating as the country ages rapidly.

There are already around 153 million Indians aged 60 and above among its estimated 1.4 billion population. Their numbers are expected to more than double to 347 million by 2050, which exceeds the current combined population of Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Poland and the United Kingdom.

In fact, the United Nations Population Fund estimates that by 2046, it is likely that India's elderly population would have surpassed the population of children (aged 0 to 15 years) in the country.

It is a radical demographic shift with worrying consequences for the world's most populous country that must sustain high growth levels for the next few decades, not just to lift the estimated 234 million Indians still living in poverty, but also allocate greater resources to take care of its rising silver generation.

RACING AGAINST TIME

And time is not on India's side. Dr Srinivas Goli, an associate professor of demography at the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, said the country's demographic transition has raced ahead of its socio-economic transition. In other words, India is headed to get old before it gets rich.

"Or at least I can say that we are getting old at lower socio-economic conditions compared with those in Western Europe, Northern America and East Asia," Dr Goli told The Straits Times.

To support his argument, he cites how it took 120 years to double the share of the older population from 7 per cent to 14 per cent in France and 80 years in Sweden. "But that doubling from 7 per cent to 14 per cent took only 28 years in India," he added.