Demographic Dividend & Economic Development in Arab Countries

The demographic dividend is the window of opportunity provided by changes in the age structure of a population. It occurs because of the decline of both fertility and mortality rates. Data from the World Bank are used for descriptive statistics, regression analyzes with and without robust standard-errors, in addition to performing Granger-Causality tests. The results indicate that estimated time trends for fertility and mortality are significantly decreasing for Arab countries. Findings also indicate that the demographic dividend has occurred in the recent decade in most of Arab countries except for Egypt. This paper shows also the causal links between the dependency ratio (change in the population age structure) and the working age population, unemployment, economic development, government and private expenditures on health and education, education, and female participation in education variables.