📄 Abstract
India's demographic dividend is routinely described as a national endowment that will either be captured or squandered, yet the capture happens inside firms, through decisions about who is hired, developed, promoted and replaced. This study treats firm-level manpower and succession planning as the mediating variable between demographic conditions and total factor productivity growth, and asks whether the productivity consequences of an ageing workforce depend on how deliberately that ageing is planned for. Total factor productivity growth was estimated for 214 Indian firms across 1,712 firm-years spanning 2016–17 to 2025–26, and firms were classified into four tiers of an Age-Structure Planning Maturity Index ranging from reactive replacement to fully integrated age-structure planning. Sample-weighted TFP growth of 2.32 per cent per annum closely tracks published aggregate estimates for India, supporting external validity. The tier gradient is steep: reactive firms recorded 1.24 per cent against 4.05 per cent for firms with integrated planning. The mechanism is a shift in the age–productivity relationship itself. The relationship is inverse-U shaped in every tier, but its turning point moves from 28.0 years under reactive planning to 39.0 years under integrated planning, while the within-tier spread across age bands narrows from 1.52 to 0.54 percentage points — planning does not prevent workforces from ageing, it flattens the productivity cost of doing so. Applying India's projected 2047 age structure, reactive firms lose 37.1 per cent of their TFP growth against 3.2 per cent for integrated planners, and the ratio between them widens from 3.27 to 5.03. At the aggregate level, a migration of firms toward structured and integrated planning would raise the firm-sector TFP level in 2047 by 7.7 per cent relative to the status quo. The demographic tailwind is currently concealing a planning deficit that will become visible precisely when it is most costly to remedy.
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📚 How to Cite:
Dr. N Subbukrishna Sastry, Dr. Manjula Mallya M , WORKFORCE AGE-STRUCTURE PLANNING AND PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH ACROSS INDIA'S TRANSITION TO 2047: FIRM-LEVEL MANPOWER AND SUCCESSION ARCHITECTURE AS A MEDIATOR OF THE DEMOGRAPHIC DIVIDEND , Volume 14 , Issue 8, September 2026, EPRA International Journal of Climate and Resource Economic Review (CRER) , Pages: 25 - 40 ,