Trends Identified
The dark side
Progress thrives on openness, and openness almost by definition means exposure. The Internet, for example, has brought critical dangers even as it has unleashed a business and social miracle. Everyday acts, such as connecting your phone to your car via Bluetooth, create vulnerabilities most of us do not yet consciously consider. The costs of fighting cyberthreats are rising into the trillions. Meanwhile, rogue states continue to frustrate the global community, and the strains from combating terrorism are reverberating worldwide. The number of terrorist incidents and casualties remains relatively small but has been rising; global terrorism death levels by the end of 2015 were more than five times higher than they were in 2001.
2017
The global forces inspiring a new narrative of progress
McKinsey
Middle-class progress
The rising tide of progress has not lifted all boats equally. Globalization and automation are polarizing the labor market, with more on the way as expanding machine-learning capabilities increase the automatability of a wide range of tasks in developed and emerging markets alike (Exhibit 8). As middle-wage workers are displaced, many are forced to “trade down,” reducing their income and putting pressure on existing lower wage workers. There is also widening earnings disparity. Workers with advanced degrees have generally seen their earnings rise, while wages for those with only high-school diplomas have stagnated, and wages for those who do not hold a high-school diploma have declined. Youth unemployment has reached 50 percent or more in several major developed economies
2017
The global forces inspiring a new narrative of progress
McKinsey
Economic experiments
Many growth policy tools have reached their limits. Central banks and governments in the developed world responded to the financial crisis by slashing interest rates , creating innovative facilities to try to keep the credit of lowing, and in some cases bailing out financial and nonfinancial players. Different mixes of austerity and structural reforms also were tried. When these proved insufficient to restart growth, leaders around the world turned to new, sometimes overlapping policy experiments, in search of a more effective solution.
2017
The global forces inspiring a new narrative of progress
McKinsey
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
Globalisation
The rapid convergence between the E7 (emerging seven economies of China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Russia and Turkey) and the G7 (global seven economies of Unites States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Canada and Italy) has been accelerated by the global financial crisis. In 2007, total G7 gross domestic product (GDP, a country’s total economic output) at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP, the purchasing value in the local economy) was still around 60 percent larger than total E7 GDP8, yet by the end of 2010, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC, a global consulting firm) estimates the gap had shrunk to around only 35 percent. The catch-up process is set to continue over the next decade: by 2020 total E7 GDP could already be higher than total G7 GDP.
2012
The future
Steria
Economies
At the same time, and as a direct consequence of this population growth, we are forecasting that our global economy will triple in size by 20501 and is set to have doubled to over $130 trillion in just 20 years’ time, in 20302. Much of this growth is amongst the emerging economies (E7) of the world, including China, Brazil, India, Mexico and Russia. As a consequence, by 2019 the E7, emerging seven major economies, will be a larger economic bloc than the G7 countries who have led the world economically and to a great extent, politically for the past 60 years. By 2050 China will have the largest economy with a GDP of over $24 trillion whilst the United States’ economy is expected to reach £22 trillion and India the third largest economy at $8 trillion.
2012
The future
Steria
Population
We are confronted by the evidence of our rapidly changing world every day and are contributing to its change each in our own way. In the past 50 years, we’ve doubled the number of people alive on our planet, reaching seven billion people at the end of last year. In the next 40 years we are expecting over two billion more people to be alive than today.
2012
The future
Steria