Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 30 2009 (IPS) – Asia has long been touted as the world s largest and most populous continent with over 4.1 billion people, accounting for more than 60 percent of the global population.
But according to the recently-released Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific, fertility rates in the region have fallen below replacement level in 16 countries, including China (the world s most populous nation) Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Still, a number of countries have fertility rates above 3.0 children per woman, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India (the world s second most populous nation) Laos, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Tajikistan and Timor-Leste.
Since 2000, the region s annual population growth has fallen to 1.1 percent: the lowest among the world s developing regions. The lower birth rates have also been accompanied by equally lower death rates.
The Yearbook says death rates in Asia and the Pacific have continued to fall but birth rates have come down even more rapidly as families are having fewer children.
We are familiar with population ageing in countries like Japan but the same phenomenon is now evident in many (Asian) countries, says Dr Noeleen Heyzer, U.N. under-secretary-general and executive secretary of the Economic and Social Council for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
Once the total fertility rate falls below the replacement rate of 2.1, We can expect the region s population to start shrinking, she noted.
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Asked if this trend will continue into the future, Werner Haug of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) told IPS that Asia s population will continue increasing, even if its growth rate will be much lower than in previous decades.
And because of the rapid growth of Africa, Asia will have a lower proportion of the world s population, even though a majority of the world s population will continue living there (60 percent in 2009 to 57 percent in 2050), said Haug, who is director of UNFPA s Technical Division.
Asked about the possible impact of the global financial crisis on population growth, he said the crisis is not expected to have an important effect on these global trends.
However, if the crisis persists and women have less access to reproductive health services, this could affect some countries, particularly where women depend on their own means for family planning, he added.
Meanwhile, migration is also having an impact on population trends in the region. And according to the Yearbook, the effects of falling birth rates are being reinforced by emigration.
In the Asia-Pacific region, where migrants move mostly between neighbouring countries, 1.2 percent of the population, or 50 million people, are foreign born. However, they live and work mostly in the region s richer economies, including Singapore and Hong Kong.
The Yearbook says countries losing the highest proportion of their populations are generally small island states in the Pacific where emigration rates can be 15 percent of the population, or even more.
UNFPA S Haug said that in Asia, net migration will only slightly effect population growth.
Its impact on China and India is even much lower than the regional rate which is below 2 per 1,000.
The highest negative net migration rate is observed in Sri Lanka and the highest positive net migration is into Singapore.
Asked if the financial crisis and the loss of jobs will have a negative impact on migration, particularly in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Australia, he said the crisis may have a dramatic impact on the lives of most migrant workers.
As the financial crisis unfolds, a two-way increase is expected in the movement of people: overseas migrants returning home after losing their jobs, and those recently unemployed at home moving abroad in search of work, Haug said.
Haug pointed out the options for formal migration may narrow rapidly as some countries may take increasingly protectionist stances.
Migrants abroad may face increasingly difficult conditions, with fewer job openings and may encounter greater discrimination and stigmatization, leading to more undocumented migrants, unsafe migration, and an increased possibility that migrants would find themselves in more vulnerable situations, he said.
He said the World Bank expects a sharper decline of 5 to 8 percent in migrant remittances in 2009, compared to earlier projections.
While remittances to South Asia surged in 2008, a sharp decline is expected in 2009. South Asia is expected to be particularly vulnerable because of the importance of the loss of remittances from Gulf countries, he added.
Asia and Pacific developing countries have also been hit harder than other developing nations because of the sharp decline in capital inflows caused by the collapse of the market for their manufactured exports.
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), growth in China and India is projected to slow in 2009 and many other economies, including the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand, are expected to contract.
Haug said the number of poor people in Asia and the Pacific is likely to increase due to the economic crisis and rising unemployment.
Since Asia is one of the most natural disaster-prone areas in the world, the effects of the financial crisis are exacerbated by climate change, food shortages and rising prices, he noted.
