Demographics, Statistics etc. 01 (Apr 09 - Aug 22)

[winston]

Are American roads ready for aging Baby Boomers? by Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - With a growing number of Baby Boomers reaching old age, there's a risk of a significant increase in highway fatalities, according to a new report.

Currently, just over one in six licensed drivers in the United States are 65 and older. But that figure is tipped to reach one in five by 2025, according to the study by TRIP, a transportation industry-sponsored research group that works to improve highway conditions.

Although drivers 65 and older presently account for 8 percent of all highway miles driven, they comprise 17 percent of all traffic fatalities, according to the study.

The number of traffic fatalities in the U.S. in 2010 was the lowest in 60 years, despite the nation's growing population, the report said. But TRIP says that as the population ages, those numbers may start going back up.

The group said older motorists shun public transportation, with more than 90 percent choosing to drive their own vehicles. In many cases, seniors resist giving up driving, even when they realize that their eyesight and other senses are not up to the task, because they see driving as proof that they remain active and worthwhile.


Source:Reuters US Online Report Domestic News

http://www.newsmeat.com/news/meat.php?a ... &buid=3281

[kennynah]

our demography easier...

zombies = 60.1% of 3.5mil Singaporeans
severe migraine patients = 39.9%

[winston]

Didnt Robert Kiyosaki also talked about the coming crash due to the boomers retiring ?

The U.S. Aging Crisis: A Threat to Stock Market Prices? by Alexander Green

Robert Arnott claims that the U.S. aging crisis is a threat to future stock market prices. But do the numbers add up?

There’s a new scaremonger in town. And his name is Robert D. Arnott, a portfolio manager, asset-manager executive and Chairman of Research Affiliates in Newport Beach, California.

Mr. Arnott has a simple thesis. Over the next 10 years, the ratio of retirees to active workers will balloon. Retirees, of course, must eventually sell their stocks to support themselves. But there will be fewer young investors around to buy them. Ergo, returns on stocks over the next 10 to 20 years will be anemic.

If this sounds simplistic, congratulations. You probably have a brain and at least a modicum of common sense. This type of “stock market analysis” is really no analysis at all. More to the point, it doesn’t work. Just ask failed economic futurist Harry Dent, whom I’ve written about before.

While it’s inevitable that there will be 10 new senior citizens for each new working-age citizen over the next decade, that in itself doesn’t portend paltry equity returns.

For starters, let’s look at what’s happening to the world population as a whole. There are currently seven billion human beings living on the planet. At the current growth rate, that total is likely to hit eight billion within a decade.

Now, if you believe that investors in China, India, Brazil and other countries will have no interest in buying companies like Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), or Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) in the future, no matter how inexpensively they’re priced, I guess you might put some credence in Mr. Arnott’s thesis.

But that’s highly unlikely. Citizens of capitalist countries are getting wealthier and better educated all the time. And the world is becoming more integrated. Would you really have a problem buying shares of Toyota (NYSE: TM), British Petroleum (NYSE: BP) or Nestle (OTC: NSRGY.PK) if they were bargains?

Of course not, regardless of the demographic trends in Japan, Britain, or Switzerland.

Mr. Arnott doesn’t just miss the big picture about the future, however. He also misinterprets the past. In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, for example, he talks about the collapse of Japan’s stock market over the last 23 years and blames it on the country’s aging population.

I have a better explanation. When the Nikkei 225, Japan’s leading stock market benchmark, climbed to nearly 40,000 in 1989, it was a bubble of epic proportions. Many stocks traded at more than 100 times earnings. And real estate was even more absurd. Just the 1.32 square miles that encompassed the Imperial Palace in Tokyo were valued at more than all the real estate in California combined.

Now that’s nuts. Crazier still were the Japanese banks that loaned money against these wildly inflated property values. This led to a protracted banking crisis that Japan’s political class refused to clean up.

To imagine that the two deflationary decades that followed this mania were the result of an aging population is like blaming this year’s warm winter on your aching big toe. Yet Arnott insists we should hunker down since “[Japan’s] demography is 10 years ahead of ours.”

Want to know what will really determine stock prices in the future? Earnings. I challenge you to look back through history and find even one publicly traded company that increased its profits quarter after quarter, year after year, and the stock didn’t tag along.

Perhaps our aging retirees will buy less in the future and contribute less to U.S. corporate profits. But there are billions of consumers around the world hungering for homes, computers, cars, phones, health insurance, credit cards, pharmaceuticals and golf clubs. They’re likely to be an engine of world economic growth – and rising U.S. corporate profits – for decades to come.

Don’t let anyone scare you otherwise.

http://www.investmentu.com/2012/March/s ... rices.html

[iam802]

Didnt Robert Kiyosaki also talked about the coming crash due to the boomers retiring ?

..

Second time I hear about the crash due to boomers (within a span of 2 weeks)

[winston]

Three in 10 young adults live with parents, highest level since 1950s

A weak economy and high debt levels are prompting more young adults to return to the family nest, a new survey shows.

Perhaps surprisingly, most are happy with their living arrangements.

By Husna Haq

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/20 ... ince-1950s

[winston]

The Myth of Overpopulation

As the Earth welcomes its 7 billionth human the folks over at "Overpopulation Is A Myth" have created this video series, that explains an interesting contrarian viewpoint to the fears of overpopulation.

http://www.mindbendingvideos.com/the-my ... opulation/

[winston]

Possible to have no new Citizen or PR or not ? So worst case is 2050. What's best case scenario ?

S’pore could be ‘extremely aged’ by 2050: IPS study

If Singapore’s total fertility rate continues at its current pace and if no new citizens or permanent residents (PRs) are added, the country’s population will become “extremely aged” by 2050, says a new report from the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS).


http://sg.news.yahoo.com/s%E2%80%99pore ... study.html

[iam802]

Notice the trend yet?

All the propaganda are lined up. We are only in May now.

They are going to keep defending their policy until the White Paper comes out at end of the year.

[profittaker]

good point:

What the government wants to achieve is the highest possible ratio of working adult to elderly. The more working adults supporting the ailing elderly is a good idea isn't it? As an illustration, it is easier for 5 siblings to support both parents than 1 child supporting both parents. Common sense. Everyone will agree on this, no dispute with that.

The problem with this idea is that, what happens when these 5 siblings became elderly themselves? That is why the government continues to perplex me by not realising the fallacy of this strategy. What is going to happen to these current batch of Singaporeans and the legion of New Citizens when it is their turn to become elderly if we seemingly can't cope with the current numbers of elderly? This is common sense too but why isn't anyone seeing it?

source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ASingaporeanInAustralia/~3/4sYLnwMYHNM/what-ipss-report-shows-about.html

[iam802]

They are just kicking the can down the road.

They have an answer to the current aging population but none when our population is at 6M