increase: young people (under 25), working- age adults (25–59), or elderly (60 and older). Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the dominant trend was a large increase in the number of children.2 In fact, in 1965, Japan was the only country in which demographic change was not dominated by an increase in the number of young people. The second phase emerged
in the 1970s, when the increase in the number of people of working age exceeded the increase in the number of young people in a growing number of countries. By 1985 more Asian countries were in the second phase of the age transition than in the f rst. During the last few decades, growth in the working-age population has become dominant. In 2004,
the peak year, 36 of 42 countries experienced a greater increase in the working- age population than in either the young or elderly populations.