Demographics, Statistics etc.

Re: Demographics

Postby winston » Thu Jul 09, 2015 6:44 am

U.S. Immigration Is Getting Crushed! By Harry S. Dent Jr.

I was on Fox Business News the other day explaining that the upcoming crash will result from government’s suppressing the greatest credit bubble in history.

Many don’t want to believe that Athens will be the thing to send markets tumbling. But we’ve also got China going to extreme measures to prop up its stock market and economy, horrific demographics in Germany and Japan, and of course our own issues here at home – including a steeper decline in demographic spending by 2016 and the fracking bubble bursting.

Yet still so many spout news of a strengthening U.S. economy.

Housing’s on the rise!

So is immigration!

What!?

I’m not sure what they’re smoking, but neither our housing market nor immigration are improving, and certainly not over pre-2008 trends.

This is the problem I have over and over with economists and the media – they’re extrapolating short-term trends. OF COURSE things look good at the top of an economic recovery! But it’s lunacy to assume those trends will continue just because they look good now.

Mark my words – U.S. immigration is getting worse over time, and it will not save us from the next global crisis.

Few people are fully aware of just how much immigration has driven population growth in the U.S. – and hence, our economy.

From the late 1800s into World War I, there was a massive wave of immigration that fed our population. It peaked at 1.25 million per year between 1907 and 1914.

Then in 1991, we hit another peak of 2.25 million when we offered the amnesty program.

Mind you, that was against a population of 250 million versus 99 million in 1914. That’s a difference of 1.6% per year in 1914 and 0.5% in the early 1990s.

That’s a huge drop! And the larger point here is – our country will never see the wave of immigration we saw a hundred a years ago or even in the last few decades!

I’ve been forecasting for years that we’d see a major decline in both immigration and birth rates – the two things an economy needs most!

And despite unprecedented stimulus from QE, both of these things are occurring.

Immigration – both legal and illegal – has dropped from that peak of 2.25 million 24 years ago to just over one million in 2014. Births have dropped from a peak near 4.35 million in 2007 to 3.9 million last year.

And like so many economists, the Census Bureau is extrapolating the short term to think births will continue upward in a straight line.

It forecasts that we’ll have 420 million people by 2060. But in The Demographic Cliff, I make more realistic assumptions about birth and immigration that are still pretty reasonable: I get only 360 million.

That’s 60 million fewer people that won’t need homes, offices, groceries, gadgets – everything!

Sure, immigration – for the most part – has been pretty good the past several years. That’s largely thanks to Mexico, and to a lesser degree Latin America.

But the chart below shows that since 2000, immigration has been falling much more dramatically:

See larger image

Over the long term, Mexican immigration doesn’t look so great now, does it?

It’s down from 400,000… to just around 120,000.

Let’s take an even closer look: Between 1995 and 2000, 2.95 million Mexicans crossed the border.

Then, from 2005 to 2010, it balanced out to zero as a reaction to the great recession. As many Mexicans came in as left! Holy cow!

Meanwhile, immigration from Asia has been rising. But not by much.

The chart shows that, between 2000 and recently, immigration from India has climbed to 120,000 from 80,000. From China it’s up to 140,000 from the same levels.

That nowhere near offsets the drop in immigration from Mexico!

There is some good news in all this. We’ll likely get more immigration from China in the next few years as that country falls as I’ve been saying it would (I discuss this in detail in the upcoming issue of The Leading Edge) – yet, those are the more wealthy and affluent. That adds productivity and spending to our economy.

But overall, immigration is falling. And if it looks bad now, just wait until we have a major financial crash and an outright depression!

We should take a lesson from Australia. The Land Down Under has one of the best immigration policies in the world.

That country encourages immigration. However, it’s very selective in the skills it targets. It doesn’t let it happen by accident. As a result, it has a larger echo boom generation than its baby boom. That’s why it has the best demographic trends in the world as far as wealthy countries go.

But over here, I expect our millennials (or echo boomers) to reject higher immigration rates as we sort through our issues with inequality.

After all, we saw the same thing during the more America-centric Bob Hope generation. That happened between the immigration booms from the Henry Ford generation and the baby boom. Like all things, it’s a cycle!

But ultimately, cutting down on immigration will be a huge mistake for us. This country relies on immigration – always has. And it’s clearly worked to our advantage both in innovation and population growth.

So before you heed the “wisdom” of so many news types espousing how immigration and housing and America’s economy is on the rise, take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

Source: Economy & Markets
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Re: Demographics

Postby behappyalways » Thu Jul 09, 2015 12:27 pm

肥胖人口全球第二多
火鍋養肥中國人
http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/internati ... 1436153253
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Re: Demographics

Postby behappyalways » Fri Jul 31, 2015 1:48 pm

India 'to overtake China's population by 2022' - UN
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33720723
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Re: Demographics

Postby behappyalways » Wed Aug 12, 2015 9:39 am

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Re: Demographics

Postby winston » Wed Aug 19, 2015 7:15 am

These 10 Countries Will Have the World's Biggest Populations By 2050

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... 081815_BIZ
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Re: Demographics

Postby winston » Wed Sep 02, 2015 6:15 am

Potted Plants and Hearing Aids By Rodney Johnson

With two kids in college and one about to finish high school, I’m no longer required to spend countless hours at a sports field or in a gym watching others compete. This gives me more time to pursue my interests, so I’m considering new hobbies.

I like the idea of music, but I’ve been told my natural abilities are lacking. Maybe I could jump on our demographic bandwagon and buy a motorcycle, adding a bit of excitement to the next phase of my life.

There are lots of possibilities, and I’ll consider many different things. But there’s at least one area that holds no interest for me: potted plants.

While I appreciate greenery in a plastic bucket as an accent in a room, I don’t think of establishing and caring for potted plants as much of a hobby. That’s not to say it isn’t work. I get that growing vibrant, diminutive trees and flowers is difficult. I’ve killed more than my share of indoor vegetation. But it doesn’t really strike me as, well, active.

Maybe I’m too American. Even as adults, we tend toward hobbies that scream we’re still vibrant, still in the prime of life. It could be that we still have that Wild West attitude about us, even though the West was tamed over a century ago. Or it could be that, collectively, we’re still young.

The situation in Japan is very different.

Considering his near-perfect track record of predicting economic events, take action to protect yourself now. Full details are here.

The demographics of the Land of the Rising (or is it setting?) Sun are well known.

One in four people are over the age of 65. They have more household pets than children under the age of 15. More adult diapers are sold in Japan than baby ones.

We can now add another qualification to the group, and this one sounds like the start of a joke. The people of Japan are so old, they think of potted plants as a hobby!

Once every five years, the bureaucrats behind the Statistics Bureau of Japan (SBJ) scrutinize the 585 items they track as a reflection of daily life. These items make up the country’s inflation measurement.

They remove things that are no longer common, and add things that have grown in popularity. The 30-odd items to be struck, as well as those now making the list, give us a sense of just how old the country has become.

See larger image

Gone from the measure of inflation is the cost of a kid’s lunch, as well as that of a pen case and thermometer. The trappings of daily life with children are fading from society.

Also on the cut list is the cost of renting a tennis court, which means that the aging population is either shifting its activities to other sports, or simply fading from sports altogether.

The answer to that question can be found on the list of added items. Under the “Recreation” heading, the only entry is the aforementioned “Potted Plants.”

What makes this even more confusing is that one of the items to be removed is “Plant Pots.” So aging Japanese are spending recreational money on potted plants, but not the pots to put them in? Strange indeed.

The shake-up of the inflation list provides other insight as well. Gone are coffee cups and saucers, glass cups and wine glasses. It’s not that people are drinking less, it’s that they’re not spending as much on the cups and stemware.

Along with the rising popularity of pets and plants, Yen100 shops are also booming. These stores sell all items for under 100 yen, which is roughly $0.81. Penny-pinching Japanese pensioners flock to such markets, buying tableware and much of everything else they need. But you don’t see this in the inflation list, because when a glass costs 100 yen, it’s too small of a purchase in the typical 300,000 yen ($2,419) monthly budget to be included in the inflation calculation.

Among the other telling items being added are home security systems, knee supports, hygiene masks, and hearing-aid devices.

If there was ever any doubt that the Japanese society was slowly aging out of existence, the changing measure of inflation should put that to rest.

As their population ages, we can expect their spending to slow even more, with deflation as the constant threat to their economy. Without a significant rise in births or a flood of immigration, the trend won’t change.

While the situation is sobering, there was a little happy news tucked into the statistics.

The Japanese are spending less on scales and more on fried chicken. If they’re going to spend their days frequenting budget stores and staring at potted plants, at least they intend to eat well and quit worrying about their weight.


Source: Economy & Markets
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Re: Demographics

Postby winston » Tue Oct 06, 2015 7:46 am

Investment Mega-Trends: Demographics

It’s no secret that the world’s population is exploding or that, zooming in on the states, the population here at home is aging quite rapidly.

This reality is tied closely to general growth in healthcare spending (among other mega-trends) — and for better or for worse, it’s hard to talk about healthcare spending without talking about pharmaceuticals.

The global market is “worth $300 billion per year” and continues to grow.

The options within that industry alone are seemingly endless. But focusing on boomers in specifically, a name like Amgen (AMGN) comes to mind.

Amgen makes an arthritis drug and nearly half of adults aged 65 or older suffer from the disease.

Source: Investor Place
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Re: Demographics

Postby behappyalways » Fri Oct 30, 2015 9:26 am

China to end one-child policy and allow two
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34665539
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Re: Demographics

Postby behappyalways » Fri Oct 30, 2015 12:23 pm

It is already too late to scrap China's one-child policy
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... olicy.html


behappyalways wrote:China to end one-child policy and allow two
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34665539
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Re: Demographics

Postby behappyalways » Sun Nov 08, 2015 2:39 pm

Why Ethiopian women are having fewer children than their mothers
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34732609
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