Nasheeba Selim

Ms. Nasheeba Selim is currently working as the Social Development and Gender Specialist in the Bangladesh Resident Mission, ADB. In the past, she has worked with UNDP Bangladesh and been directly involved in the administration of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Development Facility where she worked closely with disadvantaged ethnic minorities groups. Her areas of specialization include gender relations and equality, women's empowerment, mainstreaming gender in sectoral programs, violence against women, sex work and human rights, early marriage and feminization of poverty.

The Impact of Demographic Change on Labor Supply and Economic Growth: Can Asia Meet the Challenge Ahead?

Some member-nations of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) will see their working-age population grow or slightly decline by 2050; others will see them shrink. Several APEC countries rely on migration to expand their labor force and GDP. The labor force participation rates among people aged 50-64 and women aged 15-64 are expected to rise in almost all APEC member countries by 2050, and affect the growth in GDP per worker. Policies should focus on migration, resolving bilateral issues, the health and training of elderly workers, child care, and gender wage gap.

Emiko Usui

Emiko Usui is an associate professor at Hitotsubashi University, Japan. She received her B.A. in economics from the University of Tokyo and her Ph.D. in Economics from Northwestern University. Her research interests are in the area of labor economics, and include gender issues, compensating differentials, labor search models, employment protection, nonparametric estimation of returns to schooling, intergenerational links in skills, and testing for employer learning.

Demographic Change and Labor Quality in the Republic of Korea

The authors conducted research to analyze the Republic of Korea’s human resource development from 1986 to 2016, measure changes in labor resources, and project labor quality and quantity growth up to 2040. They found that the labor quantity growth rate declined from the late 1980s to 2016, but the labor quality growth rate was sustained, and is expected to be sustained until 2035. Employing more elderly and female workers could help push labor quantity growth. ​