Technological Innovation, Productive Population, Sustainability and Income Growth in Selected Asian Countries

Sustainable income growth in emerging nations requires productive populations to adopt and innovate technology to boost marginal productivity per worker. To this end, the present study examines how technological adoption, productive population and sustainability affect income growth in selected Asian economies between 1990 and 2022. Thus, to achieve the study objective, a panel analysis circumvents cross-sectional dependence with estimators such as Augmented Mean Group (AMG) heterogeneous panel regression. Similar robustness estimators like Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS), Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) and Driscoll–Kraay Standard Errors (DKSE) were employed. Key empirical findings include that, with all things being equal, productive population size decreases income growth by 5.6%. This means that productive activity considerably reduces Asian income growth. However, technical advancement boosts revenue. Technological innovation enhances Asian income growth by 1.1% when all model variables are constant. In contrast, using 1% sustainable energy to increase sustainability reduces the region's income growth by 2.9%. This means sustainable energy consumption in Asia reduces economic productivity and income per capita. Based on the study's findings, Asian countries should encourage technology innovation and skill development for productive populations. A productive workforce can build creative skills through ongoing training and manpower incubation via an innovation ecosystem. In the conclusion, more policy directions are appended.