Impact of Demographic and Health Factors on GDP Growth of South Asian Countries

The changing aspects of world economic transformation has been attention-grabbing especially for last 10-20 years as this time duration has seen swift progress and development in economic, demographic and health factors. Among the developing countries, there has been a dramatic increase in South Asia’s GDP. GDP of South Asia has grown by 7% on average in the last decade. This GDP growth is further expected to grow by 8% by 2019 (World Bank).Particularly, significant increase in the GDP growth of the countries like India, Srilanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan is observed. This achievement in economic growth must be backed by the characteristics of the country’s nationals. Among such characteristics, one of the determinants of GDP growth is country’s demographic factors and the health of the nationals. Demographic factors play its role in the economic growth by molding the characteristics of the people in a country and therefore percentage of labor force participation. There has not been significant contribution in the literature on the impact of these demographic factors on South Asian GDP. This study has validated new indication supporting the impression that disparity in demographic features is a significant determinant of growth in the country’s economic growth. Using a panel dataset from 2002 to 2011 at the country-level in the South Asia, this study is conducted to analyze by incorporating factors related to demographic and health into a function of economic growth, this study has depicted that demographic changeover has played a significant role in South Asia’s development. It was statistically found that health expenditure and mortality has a significant positive association with the GDP growth. It is important to note that potential growth of South Asian economies is largely dependent on its skill formation capacity of its population, particularly working age population. Therefore, Government of a country should play a major role to strengthen its health sector which can contribute more effectively towards economic growth and development.