Track G · FrontierNode G3
Demographics is destiny (slowly)
Layer 1 · Pocket
~ 30s readThe thirty-second answer
What is this?
Aging is the slowest-moving variable in macro and the most predictable. It pushes labor up, savings up, real rates down, fiscal stress up. The whole world is getting older; the rates are different.
Why should I care?
Demographics work themselves into every other track. They shape labor bargaining power, the real-rate floor, fiscal sustainability, and the political coalition between young and old. Most decade-out macro forecasts that ignore demographics turn out wrong; the ones that center demographics tend to be right.
Working-age population trend (15–64)
- US
- slow growth (immig.)
- Japan
- fell 15% since peak
- China
- now declining
- India
- still growing
- Africa
- growing fast