ABSTRACT
It is well known that Southeast, East and South Asia carry more than half of the total population of the world. The latest developments suggest that all the countries studied in this chapter (China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka) are now populated by more than three billion people. More precisely, the figure was 3.4 billion in 2005 (see Table 7.1). Demographically, therefore, Southeast, East and South Asia is one of the critical and alarming regions of the world. By world standard, except China (due to single child policy), the region is characterized by very high rates of population growth, high density and high dependency. The major objective of this chapter is to investigate the achievements and the non-achievements in meeting important targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Asia in the period of 2000-05 and what prospects are in the future up to 2015, the terminal year for achieving the MDGs. In order to investigate such an issue, it is important first to clearly understand the population and demographic issues of the countries under study. The reasons for analysing the demographic dynamics (see Chapter 4) are to demonstrate the effect of the population problem in the course of achieving
MDGs. Also, it shows how serious the population factor is, as a constraint to achieving MDGs. The attempt is made, first, to outline the general demographic situation in Asia. Next, an analysis on achieving MDGs is attempted against the backdrop of the population dynamics of the regions.
