Trends Identified
Aging
Aging the changes in values, cultures, and priorities across generations. Intra-generational fairness: Striking the balance between the present and future has always had its challenges, but as demographics, political structures, and technological advances collide, the intra-generational equity issues are gaining a front and center seat. Demographic trends suggest that our population is aging dramatically and at a faster pace than the regular population. Digital rift: The rapid flux of technology and digitalization of the world have fundamentally shifted the ways in which we operate. For example, as mobile technology has grown exponentially in the past decade, it has given a distinct advantage to the millennials and generations X, Y, and Z who more quickly adopt the change. For example, a Pew Research Study found that seniors continued to lag behind all Americans when it came to cell phone ownership, broadband access, and even using the Internet at all. Resource footprint: While not wholly attributable to an aging population, the behaviors and tendencies of this demographic may point to indirect effects on the environment and our planet. For example, data has suggested that as older people retire, particularly in developed and Western countries, their level of leisure consumption and travel rises creating impacts on CO2 and greenhouse emissions. Silver agers: As the Baby Boomer generation prepares to retire, economists are predicting “a silver tsunami” in the workforce, a massive simultaneous exiting in the workforce of the population aged 65 and older. This creates a fundamental change in the way our labor market will operate as employers compete for talent and seek to replace the loyalty, skillsets, and networks lost. Gerontocracy: As societies age, so too does the age of our electorates. Coupled with political apathy and under-representation of the younger generation in governing bodies, this points to an interesting future for our political systems as the value structures and desires of the young and the old diverge.
2017
Beyond the Noise- The Megatrends of Tomorrow’s World
Deloitte
Aging populations
The baby boomer generation powered a long but temporary surge in labor force growth. Now this group is moving into retirement, and labor force growth is slowing. That, in turn, imperils growth.
2018
Labor 2030: The Collision of Demographics, Automation and Inequality
Bain and Company
Aging populations
Simultaneously, fertility is falling and the world’s population is graying dramatically (Exhibit 3). Aging has been evident in developed economies for some time, with Japan and Russia seeing their populations decline. But the demographic deficit is now spreading to China and will then sweep across Latin America. For the first time in human history, the planet’s population could plateau in most of the world and shrink in countries such as South Korea, Italy, and Germany.
2014
Mckinsey Quarterly, Management intuition for the next 50 years
McKinsey
Aging populations are forcing developed regions worldwide to rely more on waning productivity and greater migration to propel growth
Labor productivity growth has waned and is near historic lows in the United States and much of Western Europe, despite a job-rich recovery after the global financial crisis. Productivity growth averaged just 0.5 percent in 2010–14, down from 2.4 percent a decade earlier. This productivity growth weakness comes as birth rates in countries from Germany, Japan, and South Korea to China and Russia are far below replacement rates and working-age population growth has either slowed or gone into reverse. In some countries with declining populations, such as Japan and Germany, some cities are shrinking. Among their other effects, these demographic trends put a greater onus on productivity growth to propel GDP growth; over the past 50 years, just under half of GDP growth in G-20 countries came from labor force growth, while productivity growth accounted for the remainder. Digitization, often involving a transformation of operating and business models, promises significant productivityboosting opportunities in the future, but the benefits have not yet materialized at scale in productivity data because of adoption barriers and lag effects as well as transition costs. Our research suggests that productivity could grow by at least 2 percent annually over the next 10 years, with 60 percent coming from digital opportunities. However, while crisis-related aftereffects are diminishing, long-term drags on demand for goods and services may persist and hold back productivity, a result of changing demographics, declining labor share of income, rising income inequality, polarization of labor markets, and falling investment rates. In terms of consumption, the aging population in many developed countries (that is, the retired and elderly over 60) are increasingly important drivers of global consumption. The number of people in this age group will grow by more than one-third, from 164 million today to 222 million in 2030. We estimate that they will generate 51 percent of urban consumption growth in developed countries, or $4.4 trillion, in the period to 2030. That is 19 percent of global consumption growth. The 75-plus age group’s urban consumption is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 4.5 percent between 2015 and 2030. In addition to increasing in number, individuals in this group are consuming more, on average, than younger consumers, mostly because of rising public and private healthcare expenditure. Retirees and the elderly in developed economies today have per capita consumption of around $39,000 per year. In comparison, the 30-to-44 age group consumes on average $29,500 per year. Healthcare spending by those aged 60 and older is projected to grow by $1.4 trillion in the period to 2030. With low fertility in the developed world, migration has become the primary driver of population and labor force growth in key developed regions worldwide. Since 2000, growth in the total number of migrants in developed countries has averaged 3.0 percent annually, far outstripping the 0.6 percent annual population growth in these nations. First-generation immigrants constitute 13 percent of the population in Western Europe, 15 percent of the population in North America, and 48 percent in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Besides contributing to output today, immigrants provide a needed demographic boost to the current and future labor force in destination countries. Improving the old-age dependency ratio is of critical importance to countries like Germany, Spain, Canada, and the United Kingdom, where most public pensions have a pay-as-you-go structure and worsening dependency ratios threaten to make many plans unsustainable.
2019
Navigating a world of disruption
McKinsey
Agricultural biofactories
In 2028, synthetic biology will have the potential to produce different kinds of food, including meat and drinks at lower costs than today. By manipulating genes, brand-new foods can be created with new properties or flavours. The bioproduction industry is expected to reach $100 billion by 2020 alone. This technology, which uses glass or plastic vats (bioreactors), and needs only sun or sugar, algae and nutrients, can be located anywhere.
2013
Metascan 3 emerging technologies
Canada, Policy Horizons Canada
Agricultural biotechnology will create a “gene revolution”
It is contended that by 2060, the Green Revolution will be supplanted by a Gene Revolution. Since the early 1980s, modern biotechnology has led to increasing knowledge of the scientific procedures needed to utilise gene-based techniques to improve agriculture. Agricultural biotechnology has the potential to transform African agriculture by raising agricultural productivity and farmers’ incomes. The potential benefits include yield increases in the staple food crops produced in tropical and semi-tropical environments, the creation of drought- and pest-resistant varieties, and shorter harvesting cycles, enabling the planting of several crops per season. Genetic engineering also enables cost-saving techniques, such as nitrogen fixation.
2011
Africa in 50 Years’ Time
African Development Bank
Agriculture science
Agricultural sciences reflect the diversity of production systems and conditions and build upon a multi- and interdisciplinary curriculum encompassing disciplines from within natural, political and environmental sciences, engineering, socio-economy and humanities. Research has helped to establish a highly productive but also resource intensive sector. In the wake of emerging resource scarcity and effects of climatic variation attention is shifting from mere productivity considerations towards increasing resilience of agriculture vis-a-vis more variable climate and decoupling production increases from resource and energy use. Solutions to these challenges are likely to come from a better understanding of complex agro-ecosystems and the integration of ecological principles into traditional agricultural disciplines. Research into knowledge and innovation systems is seen as crucial to support translation of the proposed solutions into practice.
2015
Preparing the Commission for future opportunities - Foresight network fiches 2030
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Ahead of the curb
Our cities are changing. Around the globe, lines are blurring between public and private transport, passenger transit and item delivery. The problem is that cities aren’t keeping up, so insufficient regulation and lack of central planning has resulted in a free-for-all that’s leading to urban mobile service clutter and a fragmented user experience. In 2019, organizations must start to consolidate mobility services within a single, coherent ecosystem built on real-time needs.
2019
Fjord trends 2019
Fjord
AI
Software algorithms that are capable of performing tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and language translation. AI is an “umbrella” concept that is made up of numerous sub fields such as machine learning, which focuses on the development of programs that can teach themselves to learn, understand, reason, plan, and act (i.e., become more “intelligent”) when exposed to new data in the right quantities.
2016
Tech breaktroughs megatrend
PWC