Pakistan's young population could power its economy. The Economic Survey shows why it won't.

Twenty years ago, I asked whether Pakistan’s swelling working-age population would prove a demographic dividend or a demographic threat. The answer, I argued then, depended entirely on what governments chose to do, in education, health, and labour market policy, while the window remained open. That window ran from 1990 to roughly 2045 at that time. We are now 35 years into it. The Economic Survey 2025-26, released on Thursday, offers the most current evidence on how the choice has been made. The government’s foreword celebrates GDP growth of 3.7 per cent, a historic primary surplus, and multi-year-high foreign exchange reserves. Fine. But macroeconomic stabilisation and the realisation of a demographic dividend are not the same thing, and a country that has been “stabilising” for 30 years without resolving its human capital deficit must at some point ask: stabilising for what exactly, and for whom? The demographic dividend lives or dies in Chapters 10 through 12 of this Survey, i.e., the chapters on education, health, population and labour force. Read them carefully, and the celebration in the foreword becomes harder to sustain. Our population Pakistan’s population stands at 252 million, growing at 2.07pc annually. Some 56.9pc falls in the working-age group; 26.6pc is the youth cohort of 15–29 years. These are the proportions that define dividend potential. They are real, and, by a perverse irony, the window to capitalise on them has actually extended. Earlier estimates placed the close of the demographic dividend around 2045; the slow pace of fertility decline has pushed that to roughly 2055, adding a decade to the opportunity. But this is not good news. A slower fertility transition means a larger, longer-sustained dependent population, more pressure on already strained services, and a dividend that can only be realised if investment in human capital accelerates, not defers, to match the extended timeline. Health and education, the two sectors most essential to hu