Forever Young? : Social Policies for a Changing Population in Southern Africa
Demography affects our daily lives. Consciously or not, we take into account the demographic context when making choices on employment, savings, health, and education. This report studies how demographic change is likely to affect demand for social...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/06/26529334/forever-young-social-policies-changing-population-southern-africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24996 |
| Summary: | Demography affects our daily lives.
Consciously or not, we take into account the demographic
context when making choices on employment, savings, health,
and education. This report studies how demographic change is
likely to affect demand for social services in Southern
Africa and how today’s policies can be shaped to reap
potential benefits from demographic dynamics and address the
population’s evolving needs. The authors define the social
sectors as education, health, and social assistance and
social policies as policies related to these three sectors.
The study illustrates how social policies designed to fit
with evolving demographic structures are likely to lead to
wealthier and more productive future generations, fostering
growth and equity. But the reverse also holds: ill-tailored
social policies can hold back countries’ development and
heighten intergenerational tensions. The rest of this report
is structured as follows. Chapter two presents evidence on
demographic trends in Southern Africa. Chapter three
explains the report’s conceptual framework and how
demography can be an opportunity or a curse, depending on
the policy environment. Chapter four studies the five
countries’ labor markets and documents challenges that a
growing active labor force is likely to generate. Chapter
five looks at the likely impacts of changing demographics on
social sectors. It shows how a dependency ratio that will
remain relatively low for decades to come will provide the
opportunity to redirect social spending towards emerging
priorities, and identifies which of these priorities will be
in education, health, and social assistance. Chapter six
concludes the study by discussing immediate policy implications. |
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