Still, when bad news from Asian economies began flashing across our screens in the summer of 1997, it didn’t seem to have much to do with us.
Like all other jurisdictions in ASEAN, our population growth has actually slowed substantially from 3.35 percent per annum in 1960 to 1.72 percent in 2012.2 Despite this, some 35 percent of Filipinos are younger than 15 years old as of end-2012. This percentage is much higher than the rest of ASEAN which averages at only 25.8 percent.