The impact of demographic transition on the economic growth and development in Sri Lanka from 1963 To 2007

Abstract

There is a reciprocal relationship between demographic transition (age structure transition) and economic development. As a result of country’s socio-economic progress, Sri Lanka has been entered the third stage of demographic transition and reaching the final stage of it. Many researchers have been shown that the demographic transition has greatly been affected to the economic development process in many countries. Therefore, this study has paid attention, whether the demographic transition in Sri Lanka has affected to the economic growth and development of the country. A regression model is estimated using the published data on GDP growth rate, population growth rate (PGR), labour force growth rate (LFGR) and infant mortality rate (IMR). The results show that there is no significant effect of PGR, LFGR and IMR as a whole, on economic growth in the country. But when we take the population growth rate and infant mortality rate individually, are effectively impacted on the determination of GDP growth in the country.