Impacts of Elderly Population on the Technical Efficiency of Asean

Abstract

As labor oriented economies, ASEAN not only consistently suffer a subpar performance in terms of productivity growth compare to other countries in Asia since 1987 but also facing elderly population problem which closely related to Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 8). Hence, this study investigates the impacts of elderly population on the technical efficiency of ASEAN over the period of 1990–2019. The estimated technical efficiency for ASEAN collectively reached 0.7398 with Myanmar in highest and Lao PDR in lowest position. Besides, elderly population was proven negatively and significantly influences the technical efficiency of ASEAN. In depth, 1% increment in elderly population will decrease 3.4% of the estimated technical efficiency of ASEAN. Surprisingly, crude death rate is significantly and positively influences the technical efficiency of ASEAN. It depicted that the growth of population may not able to be transformed as the skilled workers in ASEAN. While labor force participation of the elderly is a current trend in ASEAN, the member states of ASEAN particularly Brunei and Myanmar are suggested to carry out more policies such as providing more ICT skill training and job reallocation based on physical ability to improve the productivity among the elderly labor.