The entire planet looks to Asian and other emerging markets to sustain growth momentum as traditional markets in the USA and Europe struggle with the slow and arduous processes of deleveraging after the global financial crisis. At the same time, there is growing recognition in Asia that the sources of growth must shift to sustain their own growth momentum in the years ahead. Heavy reliance on the region’s high savings rates and plentiful supplies of low-cost labour will have to shift towards increasing the human capital embodied in more educated and skilled labour forces capable of contributing to productivity growth and innovation as future drivers of growth. Human Capital Formation and Economic Growth in Asia and the Pacific focuses on why and how countries are making this shift. The demographic transition is shown to be a significant factor as ageing populations in Japan, South Korea and China manage declining growth in the labour force by stepping up investments in education, and by changing policies and institutions. Lessons to be learned from these experiences by more youthful populations in Southeast Asia are explored. In addition, attention is paid to the consequences of cross-border differentials in technical knowledge and the quantity and quality of human capital. Several implications for public policy and for international cooperation on human-capital issues in the Asian region are identified. The chapters in this volume are edited versions of papers presented at the 35th Pacific Trade and Development conference held in Vancouver, Canada, in June 2012. The conference goal was to better understand how governments and business in Asia and the Pacific can apply the key insight that one of the reasons economies grow is because of human-capital formation – the quality and diversity of the labour force are augmented – not just because the labour force grows in size. Students of Asia’s growth prospects will find several aspects of this volume of particular value. It includes chapters on the big-picture conceptual and measurement issues; on country experiences in meeting the imperatives of the demographic transition and investing in education and skills training; and on country experiences with attracting foreign knowledge and the supply and recruitment of skills across borders in Asia and the Pacific. Policymakers will also find useful the discussions of policy implications and the menu of issues requiring intergovernmental cooperation within the Asian region.

The term ‘Middle-Income Trap’ refers to countries which stagnate economically after reaching a certain level of per capita income on the basis of labour- and capital-intensive growth, and are struggling to transition towards more skill-intensive and technology-driven development. It has resonance for the increasing number of countries in Asia who have either languished in middle-income status for extended periods of time, or are worried about growth slow-downs. This book sets outs the conceptual underpinnings of the Middle-Income Trap and explores the various ways it can be defined. It also focuses on the debate surrounding the Middle-Income Trap which questions the appropriate institutional and policy settings for middle-income countries to enable them to continue past the easy phase of economic growth. The book engages with this debate by investigating the role of institutions, human capital, and trade policy in helping countries increase their income levels and by highlighting factors which enable the shift to higher and qualitatively better growth. It questions how the large emerging economies in Asia such as China, Indonesia, and India are currently grappling with the challenges of transitioning from labour-intensive to technology- and knowledge-intensive production, and discusses what can be learnt from the countries that have been able to escape the trap to attain high-income status. Providing a conceptual framework for the Middle-Income Trap, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian Economics, Comparative Economics and Asian Studies.

Based on case studies of 11 societies in the world’s most dynamic region, this book signals a new direction of study at the intersection of citizenship education and the curriculum. Following their successful volume, Citizenship Education in Asia and the Pacific: Concepts and Issues (published as No. 14 in this series), the editors, widely regarded as leaders in the field in the Asia-Pacific region, have gone beyond broad citizenship education frameworks to examine the realities, tensions and pressures that influence the formation of the citizenship curriculum. Chapter authors from different societies have addressed two fundamental questions: (1) how is citizenship education featured in the current curriculum reform agenda in terms of both policy contexts and values; and (2) to what extent do the reforms in citizenship education reflect current debates within the society? From comparative analysis of these 11 case studies the editors have found a complex picture of curriculum reform that indicates deep tensions between global and local agendas. On one hand, there is substantial evidence of an increasingly common policy rhetoric in the debates about citizenship education. On the other, it is evident that this discourse does not necessarily extend to citizenship curriculum, which in most places continues to be constructed according to distinctive social, political and cultural contexts. Whether the focus is on Islamic values in Pakistan, an emerging discourse about Chinese ‘democracy’, a nostalgic conservatism in Australia, or a continuing nation-building project in Malaysia – the cases show that distinctive social values and ideologies construct national citizenship curricula in Asian contexts even in this increasingly globalized era. This impressive collection of case studies of a diverse group of societies informs and enriches understanding of the complex relationship between citizenship education and the curriculum both regionally and globally.

The East Asian countries have been relatively more advanced than other developing countries in the field of human capital development. Even in the 1960s they managed to attain higher levels of human capital compared with other low- and middle-level economies in the developing world. This volume examines the role of human capital formation in the rapid growth of the East Asian economies. Apart from the formal education variable, other factors such as better health care of the labour force, nutritional status of the population, and on-the-job training are important concerns that were not given sufficient attention in the 1993 World Bank study The East Asian Miracle. This present volume offers many insights of interest to policy-makers and specialists with regard to developing (and transitional) economies.

This synthesis report is the result of close, collaborative research initiated by the Asian Development Bank in partnership with Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada; the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation; and the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia. Fourteen background papers were commissioned to investigate food security issues particularly pertinent for Asia and the Pacific. The report synthesizes and collates the primary findings from these papers to articulate key policy challenges and opportunities related to food security in the region.

Articles and papers.

In the 21st century, the populations of the world’s nations will display large and long-lived changes in age structure. Many of these began with fertility change and are amplified by declining mortality and by migration within and between nations. Demography will matter in this century not by force of numbers, but by the pressures of waves of age structural change. Many developing countries are in relatively early stages of fertility decline and will experience age waves for two or more generations. These waves create shifting flows of people into the key age groups, greatly complicating the task of managing development, from building human capabilities and creating jobs to growing industry, infrastructure and institutions. In this book, distinguished scientists examine key demographic, social, economic, and policy aspects of age structural change in developing economies. This book provides a joint examination of dimensions of age structural change that have often been considered in isolation from each other (for example, education, job creation, land use, health); it uses case studies to examine policy consequences and options and develops qualitative and formal methods to analyze the dynamics and consequences of age structural change.

Why is the centre of international economic dynamism moving towards the countries of the East and South East Asia? Are there common elements that explain this success? Divided into two parts, the authors consider the central debates concerning the developm

East Asia's rapid economic growth and the crisis of 1997 have caught the world's attention. As the Asian miracle has turned to meltdown, the critical question has become whether growth will resume. Based on research and conferences at ICSEAD in Kitakyushu, Japan, this book brings together the work of Asian economic development experts. It considers the forces behind the East Asian growth miracle, the process of growth, the effect of saving, and the effect of foreign direct investment and multinationals. Taking an optimistic view, the authors conclude that rapid growth may resume in East Asia once the crisis has been resolved. The authors argue that a growth process links East Asian countries to each other and to the industrial world, and that growth reflects a process that combines capital formation and technical and institutional change. The 1997 crisis grew out of excessively rapid boom and must be handled before growth will resume. But, the authors conclude, once the crisis has been resolved, the linked process of growth supported by appropriate policies, high levels of savings and investment, and foreign investment will allow growth to resume, although perhaps with a different geographic center of gravity.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.