WORLD BANK / THE DEMOGRAPHIC CHALLENGE

Melinda Gates leads a high-level roundtable of countries that have successfully managed their demographic transitions. World Bank

• Categories: News & Features / News Stories / Unifeed
• Video Length: 00:01:56
• Production Date: 24 September 2011
• Asset Language: Original
• Corporate Name: WORLD BANK
• Subject Topical: ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT; FINANCING
• MAMS Id: U110924f

Description

STORY: WORLD BANK / THE DEMOGRAPHIC CHALLENGE
TRT: 1.56
SOURCE: WORLD BANK
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / NATS

DATELINE: 24, SEPTEMBER, 2011, WASHINGTON DC

Shotlist

1. Wide shot, roundtable
2. Med shot, Melinda gates
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Melinda French Gates, Co-Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:
“For us when we look at family planning we see the cost benefit analysis to us is really clear and we are very involved in getting the price of those modern contraception tools driven way down, just like we have done in vaccines.”
4. Med shot, roundtable
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Tamar Manuelyan Atinc, Vice President, Human Development Network, World Bank:
“Demographic trends both need to shape how we think about gender equality and creating jobs, but at the same time, attaining gender equality and creating jobs has implications for what happens to demographic trends.”
6.Med shot, roundtable
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Thirachai Phuvanatnaranubala, Minister of Finance, Kingdom of Thailand:
“The most critical factor was in fact the change in the lifestyle of the women and this came about through education, through job opportunity, urbanization as well as, you know, their valuing leisure time.”
8. Med shot, audience
9. SOUNDBITE: (English) Jill Sheffield, Women Deliver
“The fact is that women drive economic development, they operate the majority of small businesses and farms in developing countries and their unpaid work equals roughly a third of the world’s GDP.”
10. Med shot, roundtable
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Andrew Mitchell MP, Secretary of State for International Development, United Kingdom:
“This is an absolutely critical debate, one of the greatest challenges of our time, population growth, how can we take advantage of the demographic shift, it is neither guaranteed nor automatic that we will be able to do so but I said at the outset that we must not fall into any type of Malthusian thinking about this.”
12. Med shot, roundtable
13.Med, Melinda Gates

Storyline

The World Bank hosted a High-Level Roundtable of key leaders in development, and countries that have successfully managed their demographic transitions.

Policies to spur future job creation and economic growth are shaped by the age structure of a country’s population. Declining fertility, accelerated by investments in better health, family planning services, and gender equality, results in a smaller population at young dependent ages and a larger population of adults in the labor force, and then leads to a swelling in the ranks of the elderly.

Through concrete policy actions in family planning, health, education, gender equality, and labor market policies, a number of countries have produced large and positive economic returns, referred to as the "Demographic Dividend." Most developing countries have a short window of opportunity to enact policies and promote investments that raise the human capital of young people while positioning them for greater economic productivity when they enter their working years.

Demography need not be destiny, but failure of leadership to manage demographic change will guarantee lags in economic growth and increase the risk of social and political turbulence.