Trends Identified
Technological change
The impact of technological change on society is more difficult to predict than some of the other megatrends. However, the exponential increase in the rate of technological change is a pattern that is likely to continue for the next 20 years. Forecasting specific technological developments over two decades is very uncertain but the speed of innovation and change is more predictable.
2011
ICSU Foresight Analysis
International Council for Science (ICSU)
Enabling information and communication technologies
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) will continue to have a significant impact both in developing and developed countries. Like other technologies the rate of change will continue to increase and new ICTs will surely make a major difference to the functioning of societies over the next twenty years. There will be new ways of communicating and social networking – with implications for science and the production and maintenance of the scientific record.
2011
ICSU Foresight Analysis
International Council for Science (ICSU)
The triumph of globalism
There is recognition that the socio-economic challenges do not recognize national boundaries and are best addressed cooperatively. Global governance has received new lifeblood with the full support of the traditional world powers and the newly industrialized countries. While states have taken the lead in establishing this new global order, the emergence of an active global citizenry, together with a newly invigorated UN system, has played an important role in the formation of new issue-focused networks that tackle a range of pressing grand challenges around energy, food, environment, health and poverty.
2011
ICSU Foresight Analysis
International Council for Science (ICSU)
Science supplying national needs
After a series of major global economic crises over the preceding two decades, there is public disenchantment with globalization and a strong push towards new localized growth models with sustainability at their core. The goal is to be more self-sufficient, to increase local production for internal and regional markets, and to improve quality of life and societal satisfaction, rather than growth per se. At the same time, efforts to build effective global governance structures have largely failed and instead, complex national and supranational regional alliances have formed among states, businesses and civic groups to address pressing challenges. Diverse national and regional solutions prosper in a widely experimental society.
2011
ICSU Foresight Analysis
International Council for Science (ICSU)
Science for sale in a global market place
The global free-market economy reigns and intense levels of interaction occur between economic agents across national borders. Thousands of multinational companies constitute powerful international players and drive the ever-faster pace of globalization. New scientific discoveries and technological developments have created whole new industries that power economic development in advanced and a few rapidly emerging economies. Countries have increasingly specialized in supplying only certain products to global markets, but still compete intensely for the investments of foot-loose capitalism. These investments include R&D facilities and funding, which are much more widely dispersed across advanced and emerging economies than in previous times.
2011
ICSU Foresight Analysis
International Council for Science (ICSU)
Rise of aggressive nationalism
With the rise of the new and emerging economies, an ongoing power struggle for global leadership and resources has created a great deal of uncertainty and instability in the international state system. Largely unresolved sustainable development issues and the competition for finite resources present a potential trigger for war. In the uncertain geopolitical environment, nation states are the key actors. Economic powerhouses, including the USA, Germany and a number of the newly industrialized countries, act as leadership poles and dominate international decision-making structures. With an increase in international tensions, the economies of the leading powers are largely driven by national military-industrial complexes.
2011
ICSU Foresight Analysis
International Council for Science (ICSU)
Demographic changes
The last few decades have experienced social change on a remarkable scale. In particular there have been extraordinary gains in longevity in developed countries, with average life expectancy at birth rising from 66 years in 1950 to just over 76 years in 2007 (United Nations 2007). This has had, and will continue to have, far-reaching implications for the composition of families. Meanwhile, the last few decades have also seen signi cant falls in fertility rates. Birth rates have declined sharply across developed countries generally. In 1950, the total fertility rate (TFR), i.e. the average number of children being born per woman, was 2.8, but by 2007 the TFR had fallen to 1.6, leaving many OECD countries well below the fertility rate of 2.1 per woman needed to replace the population at a constant level.
2011
The Future of Families to 2030
OECD
Society and social trends
Just as population trends over a 20-year period tend to move quite slowly (with notable exceptions such as immigration) and are not on the aggregate susceptible to abrupt major changes of direction, societal trends also tend to develop their own momentum and can prove quite difficult to defect from past and current trajectories. The expansion of higher education, the growing participation of women in the labour market and the rising numbers of dependent elderly all seem set to become a permanent feature of the next couple of decades, although their combined effect on family formation, family interaction and intergenerational relations is hard to foresee. Conversely, future patterns of marriage and divorce or labour market participation among the elderly have the potential to spring some surprises in the years ahead.
2011
The Future of Families to 2030
OECD
Technology
New technologies can be expected to affect future family structures and interrelations in several ways. Firstly, progress in medical technologies has in the past made important contributions to extending people’s lives, and further advances can be expected in the years ahead, pushing life expectancies to new heights and significantly increasing the numbers of elderly. Secondly, information and communication technologies (ICT) have vast potential to enhance the lives of the sick, the infirm and the elderly by increasing or restoring their autonomy, particularly in the home, and enabling them to participate more actively in family life, not least in the role of carer and/or educator. Thirdly, distance working and distance learning are set to increase considerably in the coming years, as broadband availability and usage intensify and more companies, organisations and institutions avail themselves of the benefits offered by these technologies. As take-up increases so too will the opportunities for families to organise their working and learning lives more flexibly in ways that are better aligned to their needs. And finally, over the next 20 years the much anticipated expansion of social networking will almost certainly have consequences – often unexpected – for family interrelationships and interaction, in some cases enhancing them, in others perhaps hampering them.
2011
The Future of Families to 2030
OECD
The economic outlook
The economy and the future economic setting remain perhaps the most critical factor in determining to a large extent which family and household groups are affected, and how. Long-term stable growth, ample employment opportunities, sound public finances, etc. will clearly affect family/household outcomes differently to a long-term unstable economy with high structural unemployment and poor public finances. In either case, some households and families will thrive, while others will see their vulnerability grow. Policy can mitigate such inequalities and ease the situation especially of those who are the most in need. But just as the future economic setting will affect families/households dif- ferently, so it will also affect the scope and resources available for policy action.
2011
The Future of Families to 2030
OECD