will face caring for an ageing population, while India will have to grapple with the problems of educating and finding jobs for a significantly younger population (Hussain et al., 2006).
     Besides domestic rural-urban migration, international and intra-regional migration is on the rise in ESAP though there is a marked difference among educated and unskilled migrants in destination countries. Increasing movements in search of economic mobility brings mixed migration im­pacts; skilled and semi-skilled labor is lost, but capital gains are acquired through remittances.
     Lower costs of transport and information have increased both domestic and international labor mobility, such that workers are more sensitive to international wage differences and no longer consider only wage differentials between ru­ral and urban areas within their own country. The migra­tion pattern between Cambodia and Thailand for example, has been shown to be affected by cross border wage dif­ferentials, job availability and work opportunities in each country (Acharya, 2003). Implications for agriculture are that labor shortages can be offset by migration of human capital from other countries. Continued regionalization and reductions in the cost of transport imply a move toward a common labor market in the ESAP region.
     Likely regional implications for ESAP will be a smaller, more educated and wealthier rural class characterized by an agricultural sector adopting more efficient farming pro­cesses. Skilled individuals who pursue off-farm employment may provide remittances back to rural communities and provide skills to assist in the incorporation of new farm­ing technologies and farming practices. Rural communities that incorporate mechanization as a substitute for labor will provide individuals with more time to devote to higher paid work, thus assisting in the alleviation of poverty.
     The projected future of demographic change is one of increasing population pressure in the region with malnour­ished children concentrated mainly in South Asia; an increas­ingly larger younger population in developing countries; an ageing population in developed countries; a declining and mostly female rural labor force; increasing urbanization and inter-regional migration.

4.2.2     Economic drivers
Many of the economies of the ESAP region are economies in transition and are highly agriculture dependent. A typical pattern that emerges as economies undergo demographic transition is one where total agricultural output increases but dependence on agriculture tends to decline. The recent historical development pattern in most of the ESAP region has been a declining dependence on agriculture and an in­creasing dependence on associated structural shifts toward manufacturing and services (ADB, 2005).
     Economic growth is itself a function of many variables, including demographics, factor endowments, international trade, savings and investment, institutional capacity and technical progress.

4.2.2.1   Gross domestic product
Projections of GDP are often difficult to compare between studies, since regional aggregations typically vary with re­spect to country inclusions. For this reason, care should be

exercised in drawing broad conclusions from the studies re­ported here for regional growth rates.
     The  scenario  approach  adopted in the IPCC  SRES (IPCC, 2000) resulted in four main "marker" projections for economic growth within each of the scenario families: A1, A2B1, A2B1 and B2 (Box 4-1). Growth rates for Asia were projected to span a range of 3.9% (A2) to 6.2 (A1) per annum over the period 1990-2050. Longer term projections for 1990-2100 indicated a GDP growth rate range for Asia of 3.3 (A2) to 4.5% (A1) per annum.
     The Asian Development Bank  (Roland-Holst et al., 2005) projected real GDP growth rates by country over the period 2005-2025. These projections are underpinned by assumptions about continued rapid productivity growth and capital accumulation (Figure 4-3). The greatest growth potential relative to the baseline scenario occurs under as­sumptions that all tariffs and non-tariff barriers within Asia, as well as all export subsidies in Asia are removed (Roland-Holst et al., 2005). This scenario results in aggregate income differentials relative to the baseline in 2025 of between 8.1% for Japan and 116.6% for Malaysia.
     OECD-FAO (2006) growth projections are more ag­gregated with respect to regional reporting and indicate an average annual growth rate of 3.13 % for Asia for the period 2006-15. Oceania is projected to grow by 3.09% per year on average over the same timeframe. This compares to pro­jections undertaken in 2003 by FAO indicating a 2.2% per annum growth rate for Oceania over the period 1999-2010, 5% for South East Asia and 3.3% for South Asia (FAO, 2003).
     The World Bank (2007) projections of income growth per person (2010-30) were developed for central and high growth scenarios. In the central scenario, mid-term GDP growth projections for East Asia and the Pacific and South Asia are projected to be higher than for any other region. Income growth per person in East Asia and the Pacific is projected at around 4.4% per annum on an annual average basis for 2010-2030 in the central scenario and 6.8% in the high growth scenario. The corresponding figures for South Asia are around 3.4% and 5.1% respectively.

4.2.2.2  Agricultural productivity Output can be increased either by using more factors of production, using those factors more intensively, or by in­creasing the productivity of those input factors. In all cases, improvements in education are important.
     As discussed above, and in line with regional popula­tion projections, labor supply in developing ESAP countries is expected to continue to grow over the next two decades. However labor supply growth in Australia and Japan is ex­pected to slow as the population ages markedly. The case is particularly severe for Japan, whose labor supply declines over the entire projection period. China, South Korea and Chinese Taipei are all expected to have negative growth in labor supply by 2030-50 (UNDP, 2003; Matysek et al., 2006). However, significant improvements in education and literacy rates are expected to raise labor productivity, par­ticularly in South and Southeast Asia (Table 4-2). This could have either beneficial or negative implications for agricul­ture, depending on the level of development of the country and its economic structure, inter alia.