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2021 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

26. Understanding Demographic Challenges of Transition Through the China Lens

Author : Lauren A. Johnston

Published in: The Palgrave Handbook of Comparative Economics

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter elaborates the economics of China’s “premature ageing” fears and China’s ensuing long-run economic demography transition strategy. Thereafter it draws attention to very recent economic demography trends, including that since the late twentieth century—led by Slovenia among transition economies—countries have tended to get rich after getting “old” instead of when “young”. Although the relationship between economics and demography is more complex than was assumed in 1980s China, nonetheless the long-run economic demography transition strategy that China evolved forms a cogent reference for all countries, transition economies especially.

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Footnotes
1
In this chapter, transition economies at the national level include the following countries: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. China is also considered a transition economy, but is a special case in terms of reform process.
 
2
Given skewed birth rates in favour of males, the replacement rate may be slightly higher in China’s case.
 
3
See Feng, W., Cai, Y., & Gu, B. (2013) for debate on the legacy of the One-China Policy.
 
4
Bulgaria and Romania are the only twomembers of the EU that have per capita income levels below the high-income threshold (EU Observer 2018).
 
5
South Korea later would get old about as it got rich (see Johnston 2018).
 
6
For a discussion of this, see Campos (2020)—Chap. 14 in this volume.
 
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Metadata
Title
Understanding Demographic Challenges of Transition Through the China Lens
Author
Lauren A. Johnston
Copyright Year
2021
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50888-3_26

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