A Time Bomb
4 years, 2 months, 3 days, 17 hours
18 May 2025
In the UK and China it is 40, the US 39, Brazil 35 and India 30, but Nigeria only 19. What is it?
It is the average age of the population. And when you then overlay that the fertility rate in the UK is now 1.4, China 1.0, the US and Brazil 1.6, India 1.9, but Nigeria 4.3, you quickly understand that the economically active powerhouse of the near future will be Africa, and much of the rest of the world is facing or already in the throes of demographically-induced belt tightening.
The trouble is not just the falling birth rates, which I wrote about last year, but the denial within societies and the erroneous policy responses that follow.
That denial starts at the level of the individual as research published this week by Ipsos showed. In their Generations Report 2025 a startling finding is that even as societies are ageing, and people can live healthy and economically active lives much longer, the average view of when someone is ‘old’ has stayed the same, at around 66 years. That leads both to people retiring too early and resistance to reforms to old age benefits like pensions.
At the consumer level there is a reason why Lurpak, Snickers and Toblerones (and many other products) have shrunk which isn’t just to do with health policies. Real incomes for most citizens are being squeezed as economies are failing to grow at the pace needed to keep up with the expectations of citizens, and inequality is widening.
What is needed is higher proportions of populations in employment, redistribution of wealth through taxation, policies that welcome migration, and realism that continuous growth is neither achievable nor desirable.
Instead we are increasingly seeing policies which blame immigrants and restrict migration, increases in taxes on those who work to fund unrealistic levels of public services and laissez faire markets which allow the super rich to get even richer.
And the real tragedy of it all is that the poorest in society who are voting for such erroneous measures are those who will suffer most.