The Future in Four Charts

Anyone looking for a picture of what macro forces will determine the intermediate and long-term future need to look no further than these four charts appearing in a March 6, 2023, blog post from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis by Amy Smaldone and Mark L.J. Wright. Smaldone and Wright graphically show that declining fertility (a collateral, decades-long effect of increasing prosperity and education levels worldwide) combines with a population that is living longer (a collateral result of better nutrition and advances in healthcare) to yield an aging world.

The above is a textbook situation where second-order effects of largely beneficial factors combine to create new challenges. In the long term, how will the world provide care for so many older people? Can economies adapt to a no-growth environment? More intermediately, will education as an industry be able to adjust when there are ever fewer students? The students we educate today will be the people who must create answers to these questions and more.