Yixiao Zhou: The current paper makes a valuable contribution to understanding whether there has been evidence of “demographic dividend” in India in recent years. It explores whether the young and growing population in India has been a major driver of its economic growth. This is an issue that has important implications for economic growth in India as well as globally.
The authors constructed recent data for labor market characteristics and economic performance by states over the period 2009 to 2019 in India. The data work is a highly valuable resource for future quantitative studies on the Indian economy. The authors did a good job in presenting the evolution of working age population share, labor force participation rate, economic structural change, and the associated employment structural change between 2009 and 2019. It is revealed that the rise in working age population in India has not translated into a comparable rise in...