Maximizing The Demographic Dividend via Regional Cooperation in Human Resource Development

1. Maximizing The Demographic Dividend via Regional Cooperation in Human Resource Development by Patcharawalai WONGBOONSIN, Ph.D. Joannis KINNAS, Ph.D.

2. Maximizing The Demographic Dividend viaRegional Cooperation in Human Resource Development • Future Trends of ASEAN Demographic, Economic and Human Development • Demographic Dividend in ASEAN • ASEAN Cooperation or Competition? • European Union Priorities and Implications for ASEAN • Ways and Means to Maximize Demographic Dividend in ASEAN • Conclusion

3. Future Trends of ASEAN Demographic, Economic and Human Development • Fertility: • All ASEAN member countries to experience a decline in TFR • Up to 2025, the TFR will remain varied • 2045-2050, the UN medium projection adjusts the TFR of most ASEAN member countries to 1.85

4. Future Trends of ASEAN Demographic, Economic and Human Development • Life Expectancy at Birth • 2010-2015: an increase in life expectancy, with a range between 58.8 to 79.7 • 2020-2025 and 2045-2050 : Despite an improvement in life expectance in all countries of the region, Lao PDR (72.2) and Cambodia (69.8) will continue to have lower life expectancy at birth than other ASEAN member countries. At the same time, Singapore will continue to have the highest life expectancy (83.0), followed by Brunei Darussalam (81.2) and Malaysia (79.6).

5. Future Trends of ASEAN Demographic, Economic and Human Development • Population size: varies greatly, all with a declining rate of the population growth • Age Distribution • Group I: Cambodia, Lao PDR, and the Philippine • Group II: Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam • Group III: Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar

6. Future Trends of ASEAN Demographic, Economic and Human Development • Economic Development: a big gap; no significant change in the gap from 1999 to 2001 when ASEAN member countries were recovering from the economic crisis • Human Development: Despite regional improvement in HDI in 2001 to above 0.50 in all ASEAN member countries, the gap in human development remained a puzzle for ASEAN.

7. Demographic Dividend in ASEAN • Group I: The Philippines, Cambodia, and Lao PDR with the longest remaining period of demographic dividend, up to the years 2040-2050. • Group II: Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam with the shortest remaining period of demographic dividend, no later than 2015 • Group III:Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Myanmarwith a medium range of opportunity for demographic dividend, up to the years 2025-2030

8. Demographic Dividend in ASEAN • While ASEAN member countries are now with a window of opportunity for a demographic dividend, the key challenge for ASEAN is two folds. • Varying pace and degree of economic benefits that could be attained across the region • How can ASEAN upgrade the quality of its human resources so as to maximize and to capture the opportunity to capitalize on the demographic dividend before the future turns grim?

9. ASEAN Cooperation or Competition? • The recent trend towards improvement in ASEAN human development has resulted from the efforts at both the individual country and regional cooperation levels • The sustainability of ASEAN cooperation in social and human development has remained questionable

10. ASEAN Cooperation or Competition? • Reliance on technical and financial supports from outside • Support: ad-hoc; short-term • ASEAN as a conglomerate of competing nations cooperating only in a sporadic manner in selected matters of common interests

11. ASEAN Cooperation or Competition? • The rigid political culture with sovereignty always enshrined • Increased exposure of the local economy to opportunities and threats of the new economy and global change • Inadequate institutional mechanisms and legislative as well as regulatory frameworks to guarantee the sustainability of national resilience • Policy and implementation shortcomings to render a balance between national and regional interests

12. European Union Priorities and Implications for ASEAN • ASEAN and the EU might be different in the emphasis of the issues and their priority. Common but differentiated responsibilities include also common and differentiated vulnerabilities, which shape priorities and are used as a valuable guide to regional Cooperation in HRD. This study recognizes that regional issues are more or less similar, but cooperation is different from solidarity.

13. European Union Priorities and Implications for ASEAN • In the European Union (EU), regional coordination in human resource development (HRD) and its contribution in improving the overall economic capacity in the region is manifested in varying degrees in a number of fields, directly or indirectly, connected with demography such as: aging, labor force and mobility, unemployment, migration and brain drain, health, education, pension reforms. Such issues are becoming more acute with the enlargement of the EU.

14. European Union Priorities and Implications for ASEAN • Intra-EU migration: EU has established for free movement of any natural citizen of member states across the borders in the respective regions. Workers, businessmen, and self-employed can be transferred from one member country to another. • Inter-EU migration: Irregular immigrants have become a serious concern, particularly to the South Europe members. The flux of migrants towards the EU increased during the last years, because the developed countries did not apply policies, which could bring development locally in the developing countries and thus the need for migration from those countries could be diminished. Recent technical and policy recommendations include, for example, standardization of machine-readable travel documents, cooperation between governments in arranging return movements and annual follow-up of implementation.

15. European Union Priorities and Implications for ASEAN • Urbanization: • The concentration of citizens in big cities in Europe reaches almost 80% of the total population of each country. The largest urban conglomerations in the world (Table 7) show that London will disappear in 2010 from the list of the 30 first most populated cities in the world. Tokyo will continue to lead the list since 1980. Out of the 30 cities only five will belong to the developed world. This brings to the forefront the question: Under such circumstances there can be a population dividend for ASEAN and/ or EU ?

16. European Union Priorities and Implications for ASEAN • Aging: • The EU approval to aging aims at mobilizing the full potential of people of all ages, along win-win strategies and no exclusion. Such strategies include life long learning, working longer, retiring later than was up till now the practice and following health sustaining activities. With this in mind the policy responses in Europe are envisaging financial viability of health care systems.

17. European Union Priorities and Implications for ASEAN • Full employment: • The EU considers it necessary to achieve activity rates for all groups in the working age population, which are as high as possible. The activity patterns of the (increasing in size) older generations and migrants have to be taken into account. • The employment scenarios 1997-2005 of the EU present standard employment for all ages and both genders between 1997 and 2005 presented a slight increase (59.2 to 63.2) while the female employment as % of the total remained stagnant (42%) (Table 8). It is remarkable that the unused labor capacity (full and part time) is most acute in the female category between 30-49 age.

18. European Union Priorities and Implications for ASEAN • From a European perspective, the implications for ASEAN to learn out of the EU experiences are complex. This is particularly in terms of what the EU is doing to upgrade the productivity of the workforce to maximize the opportunity of increasing aging population. Part of the reasons is that there are substantial institutional differences between EU and ASEAN

19. European Union Priorities and Implications for ASEAN • Given a different status of socio-economic development and regional integration, EU and ASEAN have different priorities and approaches of concerns. For the EU, the current priorities are unemployment and irregular migration from outside the region. For ASEAN, to maximize demographic dividend via minimal gap in productivity of human resources is supposed to be a major regional concern in the years to come.

20. Ways and Means to Maximize Demographic Dividend in ASEAN • Rays of hope and reasons for optimism • Joint efforts by ASEAN member countries • Modern economic conditions • Leaders’ vision • Internal and external challenges • Efforts are not yet sufficient for the member countries and the region to reap the benefit of demographic dividend nor to upgrade their international competitiveness

21. Ways and Means to Maximize Demographic Dividend in ASEAN • Recommendations for immediate actions in ASEAN in the years to come: • The whole ASEAN region towards a knowledge society, away from the current status of knowledge deficit • Education for all -- irrespective of age -- and ASEAN cooperation in human resource pooling to be of the highest priority

22. Ways and Means to Maximize Demographic Dividend in ASEAN • Recommendations (Cont.) • ASEAN cooperation in human resource pooling to be complemented by regional programs and action plans on mutual recognition arrangement and the transfers of knowledge and skills among ASEAN member countries • Regional surveillance systems and regional standards to ensure that their people, regardless age, race, social class and economic status, are secured in terms of quality education and other basic needs, such as healthy food, health care, quality environment, living places, etc

23. Ways and Means to Maximize Demographic Dividend in ASEAN • Recommendations (Cont.) • ASEAN cooperation for appropriate public policy environment both during and after the demographic dividend, with a better information base for public policy and cooperation in the field of aging, directly linked with population • ASEAN to aim towards strengthened inter-generation solidarity • Existing technical collaboration at the bilateral level between each ASEAN member country and non-ASEAN units to be strengthened and complemented by collaborative activities at the regional level

24. Ways and Means to Maximize Demographic Dividend in ASEAN • Recommendations (Cont.) • A balancing role of external and internal resources for the sustainability of cooperative programs among member countries • Evidenced-based policy decisions with the role of intended beneficiaries and stakeholders to participate in such decision-making. Regional cooperation should go hand in hand, be complementary to and be supported by multilateral efforts when dealing matters of similar concerns

25. Ways and Means to Maximize Demographic Dividend in ASEAN • Recommendation: Regional Human Capital Pooling • Facilitation of Mobile Human Capital • Promotion of Mobile Human Capital • Control of Irregular Labor Migration

26. Ways and Means to Maximize Demographic Dividend in ASEAN • Regional Human Capital Pooling: Facilitation of Mobile Human Capital • Human capital pooling, associated with economic liberalization: a major contribution to the transformation of labor markets and to productivity. • “To meaningfully draw upon the availability of ASEAN human capital”: an area where regional cooperation can benefit all ASEAN member countries. • The adoption of the term “ASEAN natural persons” or “ASEAN human capital”

27. Conclusion • Demographic dividend : a new issue of challenges for ASEAN in the 21st century • Strengthen productivity: a key to maximize the demographic dividend in ASEAN • Quality education for all and regional human resource pooling: key strategies • Recommended regional strategy of human resource development : to be coherent and form an integrated part of comprehensive economic, labor market and social policy environment at the regional and national levels.

28. PROJECTED AGE DISTRIBUTION AND DEPENDENCY RATIO BY COUNTRY (Medium Variant) 1

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