Investigation into the population growth and its implications for primary schooling in Timor‐Leste by 2020

The nation‐building process of Timor‐Leste, the newest nation in Asia, faces significant demographic challenges due to its high population growth, which is the fastest in Asia. The major contributor for this unprecedented growth is the extremely high total fertility rate of Timor‐Leste, among the highest in the world. It is of great concern that if the current fertility rate and its implied population growth continue the population of Timor‐Leste will double in 17 years. The analysis in this paper clearly shows that the current extremely high dependency ratio will decline only marginally in the next 10 years and this will put tremendous pressure on the government to constantly keep up with the increasing number of children entering school every year. However, as the intrinsic value of human resource development feeds back into the overall society and economy, an adequate public investment in knowledge‐producing services at the earliest stages of life and throughout that life has the potential to change the demographic concern of Timor‐Leste into a future demographic dividend.