The Outlook

Birth Rates as Growth Engines

Updated April 14, 2013 7:30 p.m. ET

As Japan, many countries in Europe and now China wrestle with shrinking labor pools, a host of emerging nations are grappling with a different problem: how to reel in the benefits of a fast-growing population and avoid having too many people chasing too few jobs.

Swelling populations helped buoy industrializing economies in the U.S. and Europe in centuries past. They transformed South Korea, Taiwan and China in the 1980s and 1990s. Economists call the phenomenon the demographic dividend: It happens when droves of young...

Available to Subscribers