Demographics, Statistics etc.

Re: Demography

Postby winston » Tue Jan 27, 2015 6:57 am

We Have the People, We Need the Motivation

Housing starts in the U.S. were up 8.8% in 2014. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the growth rate in 2014 was slower than 2013 and 2012. But that’s OK, because home builders are optimistic that 2015 will be fabulous!

They estimate single-family construction starts will zoom ahead by 25% this year. Not to be outdone, the National Association of Realtors estimates single-family housing starts will grow by 32%.

Those are wonderful projections, but these groups seem to be missing something — clients.

It’s not as if the slow rebound in housing is a puzzle, at least for anyone who’s been looking. It’s not about low interest rates, as we’ve had those for some time, and chances are we’ll be in a low interest rate environment for years.

We’ve also had plenty of people who fit the category of first-time home buyers, which would be young adults. What we’ve been missing is the desire on the part of those consumers to buy homes, and no program currently on the table is going to change that.

The exact young adults we expect to buy homes, college-educated professionals, are dealing with two huge issues: limited job prospects and soaring debt. The two work in concert to stymie the natural progression of consumers through their ages and stages of life.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal sums it up nicely. The article describes a 31-year-old young lady in New York who works for a public radio station and waits tables. She has a master’s degree in acting from Columbia and $190,000 in debt. She would like to move to New Orleans and buy a home, but is a bit fearful of not finding a job in that market.

In the not-so-distant past, anyone with $190,000 in debt had a house to show for it. Now, it’s a question worth asking: “Did you buy a nice condo with a water view, a modest home in the suburbs, or a piece of paper from a university?”

I’m not knocking student loans or college education. I’ve had my share of both, but at this point the dollars make no sense.

Meanwhile the job market is still very difficult, no matter what the headline unemployment number happens to be. The New York Federal Reserve estimates that 44% of recent college graduates (age 22 to 27) are working in jobs that do not require a college degree.

So while the unemployment rate of recent college graduates might be low, their earnings aren’t necessarily what would be expected after obtaining a four-year degree.

Both of these things are conspiring against millennials who want to travel down the well-trodden path of adulthood, which involves marriage, kids and a whole bunch of spending.

As I’ve mentioned many times, an old boss of mine in Texas, David Smith, had a saying for every occasion. The week of my wedding he told me: “You’re never richer than the day before you get married.” That bit of wisdom has come back to me often over the past 25 years, but I know David was wrong.

As I found out a few years after I wed, you’re never richer than the day before you have children. I can attempt to reason with my wife as to why we need to spend money on golf clubs instead of furniture, but there is no reasoning with kids.

The money just flows out the door. I’m writing this after dropping my youngest, who’s still in high school, at the airport this morning for a school trip to Washington, D.C. The trip lasts for four days and three nights. Just the thought of the overall cost makes me shudder.

Millennials are proving slow to get on the train of having, and spending on, children because they’re slower to get married. And it has nothing to do with generational attitudes.

A recent Harris Poll survey shows that 21% of millennials believe marriage is very important to Americans and 47% think it is important. These numbers are almost identical to those for Gen X (21% and 48%, respectively).

However, a report from the Urban Institute shows that today's young adults are on track to have the lowest rates of marriage by age 40 than any previous generation. If the current pace of marriage continues, more than 30% of millennial women will remain unmarried by age 40, nearly twice the share of their Gen X counterparts.

If it’s not their view of marriage that is causing the millennials to eschew nuptials, then it must be something else. I’m pretty sure I can pinpoint the issues slowing down their marriage rate — income and debt.

As noted above for the home builders and realtors, the problem of a falling marriage rate doesn’t affect just the would-be brides and grooms. A lack of family formation creates a domino effect that touches all of us, and greatly alters the course of our economic future.

The good news is that, by and large, people are predictable. While millennials have pushed out marriage a bit, somewhere in the universe a giant biological clock is ticking.

It’s very likely that our young adult population will still marry in the same percentages as Gen X, and will also have children, which will put them on the same path to spending that the rest of us traveled. This will lead not only to increased demand for housing, but also baby furniture, children’s clothing, child care and all the other things that go along with starting families.

Unfortunately, this good news generally stops at the shores of the U.S., since we have a significant young adult population and most other developed nations do not.

This means that the U.S. should eventually return to years of growth, while countries like Germany, Spain, Italy and Japan will spend their years trying to balance the needs of an aging population with the reality of a shrinking working population.

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Re: Demography

Postby winston » Tue Feb 10, 2015 6:51 am

The Big Chinese Elephant in the Room

Shifting gears from money to love, here’s a little something to think about with Valentine’s Day on Saturday…

Chinese couples will be making a lot fewer babies in the years ahead.

And this has major implications for the country’s future growth.

A baby bust might sound counterintuitive to anyone who follows China. After all, the government announced in 2013 that it would be relaxing its One Child Policy. Most China watchers assumed this would lead to a Chinese baby boom. But they’re ignoring the large demographic elephant in the room: babies require mothers. And after three decades of the One Child Policy, China is about to have a major shortage on that front.

Take a look at the chart below. It forecasts the population of Chinese women by age using demographic data from the United Nations.

See larger image

As you can see, China’s population of women of prime childbearing age (25 to 29) goes into steep decline this year and doesn’t significantly recover… ever.

Average age of marriage and first childbirth are rising worldwide, and as a general rule the more developed a country becomes, and the more educated its women become, the higher the age the women get married and have their first child.

So let’s assume that China’s women, like many Western women, are postponing motherhood until their early 30s. Even then, China has a major problem. Its population of women aged 30 to 34 goes into steep decline starting in 2020.

Conception is still possible into the late 30s and 40s, of course. But it gets far more difficult and, realistically, it limits family size. You can’t have a large family if you’re getting started in your late 30s. And in any event, the population of women aged 35 to 39 goes into steep decline 10 years from now as well.

Let’s say that Chinese women, aided by new technology, somehow rewrite the laws of human anatomy and make large families possible into early middle age. Even then, China has a major problem: the country has evolved with small families as the norm and costs have risen accordingly. Living costs have risen in the cities to the point that large families aren’t economically viable for the vast majority of Chinese households, and urban apartments are not big enough to accommodate them.

This is a major problem for China and for any Western company that has made large investments in Chinese growth. Children are the future. You need them to pay the taxes and man the factories of tomorrow. More critically, in the age of modern consumer capitalism, you need them swiping the credit cards and buying the homes of tomorrow. This is particularly critical for China given its government’s stated goal of reorienting its economy away from exports and toward domestic consumption.

Is mass immigration of young women the answer? Well, that sounds good, at least to the red-blooded young men in the room. But the math doesn’t quite work out. China’s population of 20- to 24-year-old women shrinks by about 30 million over the next 10 years.

Where, exactly, would China find 30 million blushing brides willing to immigrate?

To put that number in perspective, that’s bigger than the entire female population of South Korea, including everyone from newborn baby girls to elderly women.

Let’s just say that Chinese wedding planners and pediatricians are looking at lean times ahead.

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Re: Demographics

Postby behappyalways » Sun Feb 15, 2015 1:04 pm

Italy is a dying country as babies no longer replace people who die, says health minister
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ister.html
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Re: Demographics

Postby winston » Wed Apr 01, 2015 7:44 am

New Generation, New Values: A Nuptial Impact on the Economy

My wife and I married at 23, which sounds crazy now. I was obviously young, not far out of college, between undergrad and grad school, and already had student loans.

Living in New York, my idea of financial responsibility was keeping the credit card charges under the limit while spending everything I had on rent and entertainment. To say that we weren’t yet on a firm financial footing would be an understatement.

It didn’t matter, we married anyway. Our first child was born when I was 26 and still in grad school.

Those circumstances — young, educated, in debt, not yet financially stable, back in school, and married with children — didn’t seem unusual at the time, although they would clearly make me an outlier today.

Nowadays, the news is full of stories of young millennials putting off life decisions as they grapple with finding good jobs, paying off student loans, and generally getting settled. One indication of this is the falling marriage rate, which has long been considered the starting point for so many other milestones in life.

But maybe times are changing.

Looking back farther than just the last five years, marriage has been on the wane for decades. We tend to think of marriage as a precursor to other highlights in life, like having children and buying a home. However, while marriage rates have dropped, these other milestones have ebbed and flowed, not necessarily following the path of nuptials.

In other words, just because marriage is waning doesn’t mean that people have stopped having kids or buying houses, which are both drivers of the economy!

Over the past fifty or so years, the total fertility rate (TFR, or the number of children per woman of child-bearing age) has been anything but consistent. Births in the U.S. fell in the early 1970s, and bottomed around 1976. At this point the fertility rate had fallen to 1.90, well below the 2.10 rate needed to keep the size of the population stable.

The birth rate moved higher by the mid-1980s, experienced a brief drop during the 2001 recession, peaked in 2007, then fell with the onset of the financial crisis, eventually dipping to 1.88 by 2013.

According to the C.I.A. Factbook, the estimated fertility rate in the U.S. last year was 2.01; not quite replacement rate, but definitely moving in the right direction. From our point of view, the economy needs the children to coax spending by the parents, to say nothing of supporting all of us through Social Security and Medicare taxes later on!

The interesting part is that while child birth is turning the corner, so far marriage is not.

A possible reason for this is that more children are born to unwed mothers. That’s true, but with a twist.

The rising trend is for cohabitating couples to have children. When including this category and comparing 2002 with the combined years of 2011 through 2013, single-parent births dropped from 21.3% to 18.0%, married-parent births dropped from 64.4% to 56.43%, and cohabitating-parent births shot up from 14.3% to 25.9%, almost double.

Many cohabitating couples with children cite their uncertain financial future as a main reason for not yet tying the knot, so the economy is still holding people back from some decisions. How these same people think having children is somehow cheaper or less of a burden than marriage, I have no idea.

But the point remains that even though these couples are reaching life’s milestones in a different order, they are still reaching them. This includes the desire to buy a home.

According to Zillow, 5.2 million renters say they intend to buy a home this year, which is one million more than at the same time last year. As rents get more expensive and children crowd the apartment, it’s easy to see why housing demand could pick up, especially for starter homes.

The downturn we expect in the near future will dampen some of these trends — probably causing births to fall again for a couple of years and many renters to stay put at the same time — but the great thing about people is they will eventually find ways to go about their lives and reach their goals.

As they do, I believe the large millennial generation will give our economy the horsepower it needs to finally break out of the current deflationary cycle and drive to new heights.

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Re: Demographics

Postby winston » Thu Apr 02, 2015 7:58 am

Behind the Scenes: What Economists and the Fed Don’t Get About the Economy

I often get pegged as an economist, but if you’ve listened to me speak, you know that I don’t consider myself one.

That’s because economists think you can come to conclusions about the economy by following economic and monetary policy that pours out of Capitol Hill or the hallowed halls of the Federal Reserve.

How convenient.

Try as they might to manipulate the economy, the Fed does not fundamentally control the economy.

Most economists don’t understand that… but unfortunately, that approach has come to dominate and define their field, which is why I draw a distinction between myself… and them.

As I explained on Monday, we’ve developed a number of cycles at Dent Research, but the one we’re most known for — and the one that remains at the top of my hierarchy — is demographics, the predictable things people do as they age.

Spending is a big part of our demographic research. And it’s not just a broad wall-to-wall mural that we look at. Instead, we prefer to look at Polaroid snapshots of every phase of life. We break it down by age group and we see it all from cradle to grave.

As we age, everything about us changes — even things like calorie intake, height, and weight, which peak at age 14, 19, and 60 respectively.

I’ve even found that the propensity to innovate, as well as the way power is distributed across society, relate to age.

The younger generation tends to be more innovative as they’re more familiar with current technological advances. This peaks at around age 22. The older generation, however, holds most of the power, especially at age 64 when their net worth and workforce participation peaks.

Young people tend to be inflationary since they “cost everything and produce nothing.”

Older individuals, on the other hand, are deflationary as they downsize virtually everything. They reduce food intake, spending, driving, and even downsize their homes. They even lose weight and inches in height… it’s inevitable.

The serious saving begins when people hit their mid-to-late 40s. But by age 64 on, they begin dipping into their vault and start spending down those savings. Statistics show they stop earning and retire on average at 63.

Obviously we’re interested in these big picture developments — when people enter peak spending, retire, etc. — but we’re interested in the microscopic details, too.

In order to focus on individual spending segments more effectively, we took 10 years of the Consumer Expenditure Survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor. We collected enough data to create accurate charts on hundreds of sectors of consumer spending, from diapers to nursing homes.

There was another benefit to this in-depth research into the consumer: We could more accurately plot the total spending cycle by year, not just by five-year units.

When we were able to pinpoint the exact peak, it was age 46… as past correlations had already suggested.

But we also noticed a plateau in this version of the consumer cycle of spending that landed between the ages of 39 to 53. See the chart below:

See larger image

Spending rises rapidly into age 39 as the rate at which people buy homes climbs. Spending first slowed down — and with it, economic growth — when the baby boomers first hit that plateau in 2000. Eventually, it peaked at age 46 in 2007… bringing our next key turning point to late 2014, when the boomers reached age 53 and the plateau finally started to drop off.

There are two factors driving this plateau from 39 to 53. First is that affluent people peak in their spending later than average. While the average person peaks at 46, the most affluent go to school longer, as do their kids.

This is one of the biggest reasons why the Fed’s money printing in late 2008 worked to a moderate degree up until now — they were riding on the coattails of a generation’s peak spending. Economists who expect this improving trend to continue will be disappointed.

Those boomers who were born in 1961 — right at the peak of their generation — turned 53 last year, meaning they’ve already stepping off that plateau. The economy may look good right now, but as their spending continues to taper, expect a different picture.

That brings me to the second factor driving this plateau: major consumer durable goods. Cars, houses, furniture… they all follow a similar trajectory.

Of course, the Fed has no idea that the sale of these goods follows this same plateau, and they’re certainly not tracking the way that affects the economy.

They don’t know that cars over $50,000 are up 31% vs. 4% for cars under $50,000 because the more affluent dominate car buying in their early 50s.

They don’t know that home buying has a dual peak at age 37 and 41, or that it slows down in between those two peaks at around age 39. They don’t know that furniture peaks at age 46, which it did right around 2007, or that automobiles peaked in 2014 as the boomers turned 53.

These are big-ticket items and the very ones that are most financed with debt.

They’re the most leveraged in the consumer spending cycle.

The more affluent consumers that have continued to spend and benefit from quantitative easing (keep in mind that these households own over 90% of stocks and financial assets) are already peaking, and they’ll continue to spend less as we move through 2015 into 2016.

While most economists are predicting growth of 3% to 4% this year, extrapolating trends as always, we’re keeping an eye on how the tapering of quantitative easing will impact us… as the baby boom generation continues to fall off the final demographic cliff at age 53, and auto sales start diving like home sales did back in 2006.

Don’t get caught off guard. No one’s going to see this coming… except you, and you’ve already covered your bases.

Source: Economy & Markets
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Re: Demographics

Postby behappyalways » Mon Jun 01, 2015 12:10 pm

Germany passes Japan to have world's lowest birth rate - study
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32929962
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Re: Demographics

Postby behappyalways » Tue Jun 02, 2015 1:10 pm

Germany dominance over as demographic crunch worsens
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... rsens.html
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Re: Demographics

Postby winston » Wed Jun 03, 2015 8:28 am

The Uptown Slowdown By Harry S. Dent Jr.

Recent statistics show that the affluent are rapidly slowing in their spending. Economists are surprised, as usual. We’re not.

The beauty of demographic trends is that they allow us to see changes in spending well ahead. It’s the single best indicator we have for the economy.

This is even more important in a time when many leading indicators no longer work, thanks to an economy artificially manipulated by quantitative easing.

What we know from our research is that the demographic blows have already started to hit us since 2007, but that they’ll get markedly worse through 2020 and 2022.

With this information, we see some of the most important trends on the horizon that economists won’t until after they occur. They are:
1. Dramatic spending declines throughout Europe — especially Germany, their “powerhouse.”
2. The continuing slowdown in China’s workforce.
3. A decline in spending for America’s biggest consumer, the affluent.

Let’s focus on No. 3.

The top 20% in the U.S., who typically make $100,000 plus, account for over 50% of consumer spending. They are the ones that have continued to spend since the great recession — not the average household.

There are two reasons for this.

The first is that the affluent control well over 90% of financial assets — like stocks — outside of primary homes owned. This sector benefitted the most from QE because it created inflationary bubbles in those assets.

The second and more important reason is that this sector peaks in its income and spending much later than most households. They tend to be more educated, meaning they go to school longer — as do their kids.

In other words, their peak spending is delayed… and hence, much stronger.

So what we’re just starting to experience now… is the pressure of that much stronger consumer force suddenly decreasing their spending. And it’s part of a much larger demographic trend we’re in.

Here’s a chart on household spending I have used many times before. It bears repeating as it is one of the most fundamental illustrations we have on demographics.

See larger image

People spend sharply more between age 19 and 39 as they get married, have kids, and build their households. Those between age 27 and 41 purchase most of the homes, which is the largest and most leveraged purchase they ever make. They enter a high plateau of spending, on average, at age 39, hit the peak at 46, and decline sharply after 53.

It’s that plateau, between age 39 and 53, that’s so important.

The generation responsible for the most consumption in our economy, the boomers, first hit that plateau in 2000. Wages adjusted for inflation have been flat to down ever since. Even the stock market, when adjusted for inflation, has made little progress — and yes, including the recent, dramatic stock bubble which appears ready to top.

With the peak spending that came at age 46 — in 2007 — our economy had to come off that high, literally. Sales in home furnishings, the second largest durable goods and debt-leveraged sector, hit that same year as our demographic indicators said they would.

When the great recession followed, magnified by the subprime crisis, the Fed pulled out the artillery along with central banks around the world.

Still, against demographic trends, this unprecedented stimulus has been minimally effective in propping up a slowing economy.

We hit the end of this plateau in 2014 when the peak boomers hit age 53. As you can see, their spending will decline more dramatically in the years ahead. This is when the real demographic cliff hits. Nothing will entice them to spend what they did in that 39 to 53 year plateau. Nothing.

That means, when the biggest generation falls off the demographic cliff… you can pretty much guess what happens!

We’ve been forecasting 2015 will see a slowdown in consumer spending, especially in the affluent sector. Auto sales is the last major durable goods sector to peak at age 53, so it will join housing and furnishings to head down from 2015 forward. Auto sales have been flat since their peak in May 2014. This May’s was the only one to top the previous peak in May of 2014, but May tends to be the best month. We expect more dramatic declines in the months and years ahead, especially in the luxury sectors.

Statistics from Unity Marketing show that those who make $100,000 to $250,000 spent 10% less on luxury goods and services in Q4 2014 than Q4 2013. Worse, the $250K plus segment spent 17% less. Those are massive drops!

Don’t underestimate how big of a deal this is. Our economy and markets are overdue for a reality check.


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Re: Demographics

Postby winston » Wed Jun 24, 2015 6:25 am

The Seeds of the Next Economic Boom By Rodney Johnson

I recently had the pleasure of visiting with a friend in Texas that I’ve known for almost 20 years. She has a young family, so we met at her 8-year old daughter’s soccer game. This was the fourth game of the day for the young athlete, and she would play another game in the early evening.

It was over 90 degrees out. There was little shade. While my friend’s oldest was out in the field, her 5-year old ran around playing with other kids, and her 3-year old napped. As we sat and talked it reminded me of when I was in her place, lugging my kids and their gear to different fields, rain or shine.

I’m glad I did it, but I have zero interest in doing it over again. It’s time for the next generation to do its part. So thank goodness they finally are… not only on the soccer fields, but in family life in general!

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of annual U.S. births increased by 1.4% last year, moving up from 3.93 million to 3.99 million, or some 60,000 more kids.

60,000 is a cause for celebration.

We need more babies. Beyond causing sleep deprivation in parents, they also require 18 years of copious spending, minimum, and that’s what drives the economy!

As children age, families spend more money on clothes, shelter, sports, music lessons, vacations, car insurance — you name it, it costs more with kids.

Once the youngsters leave home, the empty nesters then focus on retirement by saving and paying down debt. In 2008 we reached the peak year for baby boomer spending. After that, the generation was firmly in the empty nester category, and had moved from spending more to saving more.

Behind them are the members of Generation X, who are still raising their kids, but there are fewer people in this generation. They can’t buy as much stuff, and therefore drive our economy, as the boomers did.

This is where the millennials come in.

As the rising young generation, which happens to be bigger than the boomers but more spread out, we need this group to hop on the spending train by having children.

So far, they’ve refused to board. We all know why — the economy.

Young people have had a difficult time finding jobs in general. More specifically, good-paying, secure jobs. Without financial stability, millennials have been slower to wed and slower to start families.

The recent data from the CDC suggests this might be changing… and the good news doesn’t stop there.

Other research notes that women who are older and more educated are the most likely to have children in the years ahead. Birth rates rose 3% in 2014 for women in their 30s, while remaining flat for women 25 to 29. At the same time, according to the Wall Street Journal teenage births keep falling and reached a record low last year.

Putting all the pieces together, it appears that older millennials are either finally stable enough to have children, or simply think they’re running out of time.

Either way, our economy will be the big winner as this large generation starts spending in earnest to support their kids. While higher birth rates will take a few years to start driving the economy, eventually the trend will show up in the demand for more housing, more family cars, and of course, more soccer balls.

But that’s still years off. Before the economy starts to look better, we have to suffer through the effects of the boomers decreasing their spending.

Fortunately, that’s why studying demographics is such a profitable enterprise. While the boomers are spending less, they are spending in more focused, specific areas: luxury goods, expensive getaways, health care, etc.

That’s how I approach my own investment portfolio, by asking: “How are the biggest spenders influencing the economy?” And it’s the same approach I use in my Triple Play Strategy, which we officially launched to the public yesterday.

So while the next few years could be quite difficult as we deal with overhanging debt and bubbles in financial assets, there are still plenty of ways to invest. As for the economy, there are also reasons to be optimistic about the future. 3.99 million reasons, to be exact.

Source: Economy & Markets
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Re: Demographics

Postby winston » Fri Jul 03, 2015 6:36 am

The Best Demographic Trends of the Century By Harry S. Dent Jr.

Greece is not the place to be right now.

Its citizens are capped out at $67 a day on the ATM. Its pensioners are pinching pennies. Its doctors are leaving in droves. Its long-term demographics are deplorable, making the chances for recovery more and more abysmal. It’s a nightmare!

I’ve already explained that large-scale debt deleveraging will be one of the triggers that sends the global economy back into crisis. Now that Greece has defaulted on its $1.7 billion IMF payment, they’re looking more and more like the beginning of the end.

If Greece kicks the bucket, it could spill over to the other weak euro zone members — namely, Portugal, Italy, and Spain. Lance explained yesterday that investors who are fearing the worst from Greece dropped out of not only Greece debt but those other lower quality bonds as well.

With so many developed countries already sitting on the brink, and with the worst yet to come, it’s important to consider which countries will be hit the hardest… and which will fare the best going into the next recovery.

The truth is that, with the lower birth trends that come from increasing urbanization, wealth, and education, almost all developed countries have sideways (at best) to falling demographic trends for decades to come.

But there are a few exceptions…

And they are, in order: 1) Australia… 2) Israel… 3) Switzerland… 4) Norway… 5) Sweden… and 6) New Zealand.

In these countries, the millennials or “Echo Boomers” will ultimately bring them to new heights.

They’re the few countries that, unlike the U.S., saw a larger generation following their baby boom. These demographics are partially due to higher birth rates but mostly because of strong immigration policies.

When you consider how the stronger demographics in a country like Australia translates into more spending, you understand why they’re at the top! Here’s a look at their spending wave from the middle of last century to the end of this one:

See larger image

It’s been flat from 2010 to 2015, but after this, it’s the only developed country with slightly positive trends into 2018.

But in the first stage of the next global boom, from 2023 to 2036, Australia will have the strongest surge of any developed country. It’ll have a minor downtrend into 2045, but then another boom later on in the century, around 2065 to 2070.

Right now, Australia has the highest immigration per capita of any major, wealthy, developed country. It’s greater than even Canada or the U.S., which are immigration magnets. And it could continue to enjoy good immigration levels at times, even in the coming depression, as the wealthy flee countries such as China.

The bottom line is that Australia simply has the best demographic trends of any wealthy, developed country. While the bubbles in China, commodities, and their own real estate will hurt them especially in the next global financial crisis, there isn’t a country with lower debt, or one better positioned for the next boom.

The other five have similar patterns. They’ll see (or are already seeing) demographic downturns into the middle or end of next decade. After that, they’ll enjoy a surge going into 2040.

Unfortunately, in the grand scheme of things, those six are only smaller countries.

Australia only has a population of 23 million people. Sweden has even fewer at 9.5 million. And the others even less: Israel at 8.3 million, Switzerland at 8.1 million, Norway at 5 million, and New Zealand the lowest at 4.5 million.

Combined, these countries contain less than a sixth of the U.S. population.

The greatest demographic growth of all will come out of the emerging world, between 2023 and 2070. Those are the countries that will experience a boom due to greater urbanization and a growing middle-class consumer population (though they won’t become as affluent as their developed-world counterparts).

That’s when we could see the greatest commodity boom and bubble in history, as emerging countries dominate growth. And Australia, with its strong commodity exports, is perfectly set to ride the wave.


Source: Economy & Markets
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