Fataraz Zahan :
Over the last two decades, the world has observed a declining population trend. Around two hundred years back, there were less than one billion humans living in this universe. From 1900 to 2000 it was increasing dramatically. The United Nations projects that population growth and its declining trend will continue in the coming decades. This can be triggered by many possible trends, which may vary from country to country.
Bricker and Ibbitson wrote a very useful book in 2019 where they have shown declining trends of populations in various countries by using different cases. The authors concluded that if the decreasing trend of fertility rate continues, it will not only be zero but also turn negative.
Historically in high income countries the fertility rate was 5 per woman which is now lower than 1.5. Automation and artificial intelligence may be an alternative but not exact replacement of human talent and the flow of new ideas. Population growth is obvious for stable and further exploring economic growth. During the last half of the twentieth century globally effective labor force contributed a significant positive impact to GDP growth.
However, in the developed countries where they have radical technological advancement, for robotics, e-ecommerce and digitalization, they still face difficulties due to the shortage of human capital. Japan as an example, their current population is only 125.40 million and the highest rate of people over the age of 100. Official forecasts predict that the country’s workforce problem is expected to worsen, within 2040 the percentage of elderly people will be above 35%.
As we know Japan’s economy following World War II has sometimes been compared to the miraculous phoenix and they were achieving the highest rates of growth. Meanwhile their high rates of labor force both in manufacturing and services was a great contribution to the GDP growth. For getting maximum output from the labor force, government labor allocation policies created conditions which forced workers into the manufacturing sector.
In our country the fertility rate per woman is declining. It was 6.91 in 1971 and currently it is 2.00 which is an international standard, an impressively stable and ideal rate for us. Though there are a few variations in the fertility rate between urban to rural areas and from upper to lower classes of the society. It is predicted that the trend of our population growth will continue to decline in the coming decades.
The UN report titled ‘World Population Prospects 2022’ forecasted that children per woman will further decline and by the end of the century Bangladesh could have a shrinking population. We as an economically growing nation are working hard to achieve the status of high income countries. Considering our situation regarding human resources, we are enjoying the peak of the working age population.
Our labor force, especially migrant labor and garments workers have great contributions to accelerate GDP growth. We have an abundant labor force that should not be underutilized. To ensure suitable working environment is also very crucial. This is high time for us to rethink and initiate appropriate policy so that our human resources will be better employedand we will get maximum output from them.
Nevertheless, it should be our prime concern to utilize the talent of our human capital. Every year many of our young people take higher degrees from the world’s top universities like Harvard or MIT. We should have some effective policy for them so that they felt motivated to make their contribution in the development process of Bangladesh from home or abroad. Their contribution will certainly enrich and update our nation.
For the nation’s greater development, readiness for the fourth industrial revolution is mandatory. We should develop our own experts in every sector, so that our government and policy makers can initiate appropriate policy more confidently. That will ultimately make our government stronger and globally their negotiation capability will increase which will serve the nation’s best interest.
(The writer is Senior Research Associate, Bangladesh Institute of Governance and Management).
