John Maynard Keynes (the economist) often remarked that ‘we tend to assume the future will be like the past – despite constant evidence to the contrary’.
It would seem that not only is the European population aging, but it is doing so at a much faster rate than the US. In the US the birth rate is more than 2/woman, in Europe it is 1.5. In Italy, Spain and Greece the figure is 1.1/woman.
It doesn’t take an Einstein to see the cumulative impact of these differing birth rates. If you add to this the variation in the rates of immigration then you really do have a divergence between Europe and the US. At the moment Europe’s population is 100 million more than the US. Before 2040 the US will be the more populous continent.
Like the 50+ issues, that I keep banging on about, this is another demographic shift that is too big for marketing to know what to do. Your average marketer is not going to be in their current job in 2040, probably not in the same profession, so why bother with this demographic stuff. How companies handle these mega issues is a real problem and I don’t see any simple solutions.
This demographic research was conducted by Christopher Smallwood and Andrew Jones and is available from Makinson Cowell. I don’t have any links, sorry.
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