Fiscal impact of ageing How and when the problem of ageing of Asian population manifests itself will have important implications for the structure of the social and fiscal policy choices confronting the Asian economies in the coming years.
In terms of timing, the countries fall into three principal groups:4 (i) the East Asian countries - the most demographically mature and developed in economic terms including Korea and Taiwan, (ii) South East Asia including Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand which has recently experienced significant declines in fertility and increased life expectancy, but where the further  4  14  Since this categorisation is done from the viewpoint of the fiscal impact of population ageing, this is different from what has been followed in Section III.