Who will account for 50%+ of urban consumption in Europe and the US. Come on have a guess.

It is a bit embarrassing to keep on saying how good McKinsey's reports are but there is no getting away from it they know their stuff and present it in a compelling way.

I do suggest you spend 20 mins of your life listening to this podcast about the role of the elderly in driving urban consumption. Not sure that I would use the world 'elderly' as somebody who is 60+ but let's not worry about that.

The report makes an excellent point about the headline figure disguising two different trends.

This is a quote from the podcast:

The growth (in expenditure) is coming by the sheer size of the segment but not necessarily by the wealth of the segment. In France, we expect that the 60-plus-year-old segment will have 20 to 30 percent less disposable income, and at the same time it is growing twice to three times as fast as the segment of the 40 to 50 year olds.

This basically means that overall growth is going down. That’s a pattern that you probably see not only in France—you see it in Germany, you see it all across Western Europe.

This is a timely reminder to always dig down into the data and not just take the top line number. Dick Stroud