Gross domestic product per person (GDP per capita) is the most widely used comparative indicator of economic performance, and its value varies considerably across the Asia/Pacific region (, Panel A). The region includes some of the richest as well as some of the poorest countries in the world (please note the differences in the axis with respect to the values of GDP per capita in the top and bottom parts of , Panel A). Macau (China), Australia, Singapore, Japan and Brunei Darussalam are all economies with a higher GDP per capita than across the OECD on average. By contrast, in 2012 GDP per capita was less than USD 1 000 per person in Cambodia, Tajikistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Differences in GDP per capita within the Asia/Pacific region are much greater than within the OECD: Australia’s GDP per capita is almost 100 times higher than that of Nepal.

The total fertility rate (TFR) gives an indication of the number of children an average woman will have in her lifetime.The size of the population remains stable if the total fertility rate is a little over two, allowing for some mortality during infancy and childhood. This so-called replacement rate is around 2.1 children per women for industrialised countries but it may be higher for poorer countries.

On average marriage rates in the Asia/Pacific region are 50% higher than the average across OECD countries (, Panel A), and there is considerable variation in both marriage and divorce rates across the Asia/Pacific region. Crude marriage rates are highest at over ten marriages per 1 000 adults in the Maldives, Bangladesh, Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic, while the marriage rate is less than half of this in Samoa, New Zealand and Mongolia. The crude divorce rate in the Maldives is also three times higher than the average of the Asia/Pacific economies. Divorce rates are low relative to high marriage rates in Indonesia, -Tajikistan and Viet Nam.

There is a considerable variation in the share of international migrants in the total population (, Panel A). In Macau (China), Brunei Darussalam, Singapore and Hong Kong (China), Australia and New Zealand more than one-quarter of the population was foreign born (please note the differences in the axis regarding the population shares of migrants in the top and bottom parts of , Panel A). In China and Indonesia – countries with considerable internal migration – the population share of international migrants was negligible at less than 0.1% of the total population in 2013.

In 2012, economies in the Asia/Pacific region on average had ten people of working age for every person over 65 (, Panel A).This is more than twice as high as the OECD’s average. Papua New Guinea, Mongolia and Tajikistan top the list with at least 16 working-age persons per one person of pension age, a stark contrast to Japan’s 2:1 ratio. Within the Asia/Pacific region, OECD countries such as Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand have the smallest old-age support ratio in comparison to non-OECD countries. In these countries life expectancy is high (), and particularly in Japan and Korea fertility rates are low (). This has contributed to an intermittent decline in the Japanese working-age population since 1995, while the Korean working-age population is projected to decline from 2018 onwards.