Halcyon In Future

HALCYON IN FUTURE HELPS YOU BETTER UNDERSTAND THE TRENDS SHAPING OUR WORLD.

Demographic trends, towards 2025

 

 

McKinsey claimed that the urban world is shifting. About 600 urban centres will continue to generate about 60% of global GDP towards 2025, but the centre of gravity will move south and, even more decisively, east. 

See also:

• Halcyon on Demographics, 2007-2010
• Halcyon on Demographics, towards 2050

Demographics trends, towards 2050

 

 

Against the background of the world's population growing from 7 billion now to a projection of over 9 billion in 2050, a new Economist report looks at ways to boost yields of the main crops, considers constraints of land and water and the use of fertiliser and pesticide, assesses biofuel policies and explains why technology matters so much.

See also:

• Halcyon on Demographics, 2007-2010
• Halcyon on Demographics, towards 2025
• Halcyon on Food trends, towards 2050
• Halcyon on Hunger trends, 2011
• Halcyon on Food, 2007-2011

India trends, towards 2025

 

 

India is set to become the world's fifth largest consumer market by 2025, providing significant opportunities for consumer business companies, says a new Deloitte study, 'Consumer 2020: Reading the signs'.

See also:

• Economic trends, 2011

Food trends, towards 2050

 

In the next 40 years, the world’s population may increase to 9 billion, with most of the increase occurring in the developing world.  To avoid food shortages on an unprecedented global scale, crop yields must be increased by a similar margin, in the same timeframe.

The era of cheap food is at an end, according to recent reports, with the real prices of key crops set to rise 50-100% during the next 40 years.

See also:

• Food trends, 2011
• Hunger trends, 2011

Consumption trends, towards 2020

 

A 2011 report from Deloitte sees economic, demographic, and technological forces changing consumer behavior drastically.  Consumer 2020: Reading the signs forecasts that the coming decade will see a rebalancing in the global economy.

See also:

• Consumption trends, 2011

Equality trends, 2011

 

 

A common yardstick for measuring societal equality is the Gini coefficient, which runs from 0 (everyone has the same income) to 1 (one person has all the income).  Most countries range between 0.25 and 0.6.  The Economist shows that the Gini coefficient has gone up a lot in some rich countries since the 1980s.  And as poor countries are on average growing faster than rich ones, inequality in the world as a whole is falling.

However, inequality is a complex issue, involving not just straightforward comparisons of individuals, but also comparisons over time.  Branko Milanovic, lead economist at the World Bank's research division, approaches the issue in a new and innovative way, focusing on inequality in income and wealth in different time periods and contexts: from inequality in Roman times (and how it compared with inequality today), to depictions of wealth inequality in literature (Pride and Prejudice and Anna Karenina), to inequality across generations of a single family (the three generations of Obamas illustrating this theme). As for global inequality today, Milanovic examined, in TheHavesAndHaveNots.mp3 at the LSE in 2011 the main causes (differences in average incomes between countries), the role China and India might play, and, perhaps most importantly, whether global inequality matters at all, and if does, what can we do to reduce it.

Business trends, 2011

 

During the 2011 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, CNBC hosted a full-panel debate engaging business and political leaders in a televised discussion entitled 'The West Isn't Working'.

 

Consumption trends, 2011

  

Consumptionomics argues that for years the engine of global capitalism has been fuelled by consumption, but that the world will not be able to cope with the expansion of this style of consumption in the developing.

See also:

• Consumption trends, towards 2020

Energy trends, towards 2050

 

 

Global demand for energy will increase by 36% between now and 2035, according to forecasts.  Emerging economies will account for almost all of this increase.  Possible responses:

• All of the world’s energy needs could be provided cleanly, renewably and economically by 2050, according to a major new study by WWF.  Two years in preparation, The Energy Report breaks new ground with its global scope and its consideration of total energy needs including transport, and making adequate and safe energy available to all.
  
• Building manufacturing plants in the Sahara could allow the extraction of silica from the plentiful sand, and use it to make photovoltaic solar panels.  These first solar panels, in turn, could be used to build some initial solar power plants, the energy from which would be used to power more silicon manufacturing plants, or to "breed" more plants until, eventually, there are enough in the Sahara to churn out enough photovoltaic panels to provide half the world's electricity needs by 2050.

Ageing trends, 2011

 

2011 saw the first of the baby-boomer generation, born between 1946 and 1964, reach the age of 65.  Over the next 20 years or so what The Economist calls the "most numerous, most successful and luckiest generation ever" will gradually move into retirement.