Helping you navigate the new normal
Women in most parts of the world are not having enough children to replace our population. This is one of the great issues of our time, but is hardly ever discussed. Yet the issue is very topical, with Chinese births falling to a 60-year low last year. Only 15.23 million babies were born, the lowest
Is global economic growth really controlled by monetary policy and interest rates? Can you create constant growth simply by adjusting government tax and spending policy? Do we know enough about how the economy operates to be able to do this? Or has something more fundamental been at work in recent decades, to create the extraordinary […]
The post Time to recognise the economic impact of ageing populations appeared first on Chemicals & The Economy.
The US 10-year Treasury bond is the benchmark for global interest rates and stock markets. And for the past 30 years it has been heading steadily downwards as the chart shows: US inflation rates finally peaked at 13.6% in 1980 (having been just 1.3% in 1960) as the BabyBoomers began to move en masse into the […]
The post US Treasury benchmark yield heads to 4% as 30-year downtrend ends appeared first on Chemicals & The Economy.
Nearly two-thirds of people in the world’s top 25 countries feel their country is heading in the wrong direction, according to a new poll from Ipsos MORI. As their chart shows: China, Saudi Arabia, India, Argentina, Peru, Canada and Russia are the only countries to record a positive feeling The other 18 are increasingly desperate […]
The Financial Times has kindly printed my letter below, welcoming the Fed’s decision to address the impact of demographics, but arguing that it needs to focus on demand issues, given the impact of today’s ageing populations. Sir, It is good to see the US Federal Reserve is finally beginning to address the impact of demographics […]
Companies and investors often say “we don’t need to think about demographics – its too far in the future to matter”. This might have been true 20 years ago, but not today. As European chlorine industry demand confirms, the truth is that “history catches up with us”. The reason is simple. Europe stopped having enough […]
In 2013, there were fewer births in the G7 countries – responsible for nearly 50% of the global economy – than in any year since the Great Depression year of 1933.* As the chart also shows, 1933 was an exception. Births bounced back immediately afterwards. But the low figure in 2013 is part of the declining trend seen since […]
“We have for many years addressed the very important issues of how to avoid becoming pregnant, how to avoid sexual diseases, how kids have a right to their own bodies, but we totally forgot to tell them we cannot have children forever.” Suddenly, and it does seem to be a sudden realisation, Western countries are beginning to […]
The blog’s latest post for the Financial Times FT Data blog is below. The industry is going through major difficulties, which is bad news not only for its suppliers of plastic and other components. It is also a problem for China, which manufactures 70% of the world’s toys. The toy industry is going through difficult […]
Slowly but surely, companies seem to be learning the hard way that demographics, not central bankers, drive demand. The blog is surprised this simple insight is still not widely understood. But the example of the global toy market highlights the paradigm shift underway: In 1950, there were 83m children aged between 0 – 4 years in the wealthy developed […]
The blog’s latest post for the Financial Times FT Data blog is below. February 13, 2014 2:22 pm by FT Two remarkable global demographic developments have occurred since 1950. Yet only recently have their impact on companies and the economy begun to be properly understood. Life expectancy has risen by 50 per cent since 1950 […]
Demographics drive demand. Developments since 1950 are thus creating massive and unprecedented change in global demand patterns, as the chart above highlights:…
Fertility rates (green) have halved on a global basis, with the average woman having just 2.5 children today
