Bangladesh's twin demographic challenges

We could grow old while wasting our youth

I gave a short talk at the Centre for Policy Dialogue earlier this week. Slides are posted below.

The discussions raised two important points.

• The above projections are optimistic in the sense that it assumes we will not experience imbalances or instability over the next quarter century, and fiscal policy will remain such that debt does not run up. These are strong assumptions for a developing country.

• While the analytical framework does not focus on distribution, there are profound distributional implications. Bangladesh’s fundamental fiscal problem of low domestic revenue mobilisation is assumed to continue, presenting a binding budget constraint and difficult fiscal trade offs.

I am grateful to Dr Fahmida Khatun for facilitating the talk.

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