Changing demographics, emerging risks of economic-demographic mismatch and vulnerabilities faced by older persons in South Asia: Situation review in India and Pakistan

This paper provides an overview of some important demographic changes in two major South Asian countries, India and Pakistan, resulting in a situation marked by sustained fertility decline, life prolongation and a growth of population in both the young (especially 25 years and over) and old (60 years and over) age groups. The study postulates that these changes may prove significant for both the countries – affecting, inter alia, the size and clearance mechanism of their labour markets, nature of dependencies, increasing ratios of young to old, etc. The study further postulates that a fair proportion of families in the two countries may find it difficult to endure old-age dependencies owing to increasingly widespread casualization of employment and jobless growth. Enduring old-age dependencies may also be difficult due to limited work opportunities for older persons, functional disabilities, perpetuating poverty, lack of social assistance, compression in real public health expenditure, etc. The study also postulates that the pro-market changes in these countries may not particularly conform to their age structure changes. It may as well create a situation fraught with a significant economic-demographic mismatch (see appendix 1).