Demographic Divide in Asian Nations

In 2010, the population of Asia was 4.17 billion, approximately 60% of the world's total. Asia includes not just a vast population but an enormous variety of different geographical regions and zones, countries, races, and levels of development. The demographic characteristics of its populations also vary greatly but three associated processes are found across the region, one virtually universal and the other two with different degrees of concentration. The virtually universal process is a decline in fertility, although the speed and magnitude of that decline clearly vary (Table 1). In [Page 624]East Asia, the total fertility rate—or the average number of children born to a woman by the end of her reproductive life—has declined to well below replacement level of 2.1 children and is comparable to the countries of Europe.

Table 1 Basic Population and Urbanization Trends, 1970–2010

This decline in population growth means that East Asia has moved from a period of rapid population expansion with large proportions of youthful populations, through a period when the number of the economically active relative to dependants was high. This “demographic dividend,” when the growth in the number of workers relative to both children and the elderly was high, supported the rapid economic development of East Asia. However, by the early 21st century, most of the countries in that region were on their way to a situation already common in Europe: low population growth, even a declining population in the case of Japan, and aging populations and increasing old-age dependency. In South-central and Western Asia, in contrast, rapid rates of population growth persist, even if fertility has declined, and predominantly youthful populations still characterize the majority of countries in these regions.

The two other demographic processes in Asia reflect migration: first, the increasing concentration of populations in urban areas, often extremely large cities, and second, a transition from economies of net emigration to net immigration. Virtually half of the populations of East Asia and Southeast Asia lived in towns and cities in 2010 compared to just under one third in South-central Asia (Table 2). The countries of East Asia, and Southeast Asia of Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, have seen the emergence of a demand for labor in the face of declining rates of national labor-force growth and increased pressures to import migrant labor. By the 21st century a demographic divide had emerged in Asia between higher-fertility areas of origin of migration and low-fertility areas of destination in cities and some countries. However, the oil-rich countries of Western Asia are exceptional as their small indigenous populations concentrated in urban areas in arid environments have generated a need to import large amounts of labor attracted by their prosperity. Most of the unskilled and semiskilled labor comes from South-central Asia.

Table 2 Urbanization and International Migration

These demographic processes, largely determined by underlying economic factors though not exclusively so, have profound implications for education and diversity. Japan and South Korea, countries that once saw themselves as largely homogeneous, as well as the cities of Hong Kong and Singapore and the state of Malaysia, are moving toward more multicultural societies. This trend is not as marked as in Europe, North America, or Australasia, but it has created very different societies from those of a few decades ago. Less than 2% of Japan's or Korea's populations are foreign-born, although these migrant populations are concentrated in specific parts in or around the major cities. The presence of some [Page 625]250,000 ethnic Japanese from South America has raised issues of the integration of a “foreign” population, as well as questions of what “Japaneseness” means. These neikkeijin “look” Japanese but behave as Brazilians or Peruvians. The proportions of foreign-born in Malaysia and Singapore are much higher at 8.4% and 40.7%, respectively. Internal migrations, too, in India and China produce more diverse urban societies in the mega-cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing as migrants from different parts of these vast and diverse countries come together in the major centers of development.

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