If you’re retired or a pre-retiree, you probably remember a time when the world worried about the population explosion. Fears of overpopulation, we were told, would cause global food shortages in the final three decades closing the millennium. Well, that never happened! In fact, you can simply forget everything you ever heard about the coming population explosion!

Across the world, nation’s are not challenged by a population boom but by a population bust! The world’s largest economic powers need more people — not less!

An essay in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, a magazine published by the Council of Foreign Relations, points out a dramatic demographic shift is reshaping economies across the world. The typical pattern of modern economies is to develop a middle class that urbanizes, grows more educated, and more affluent, and then fertility rates collapse. The worldwide population bust is of more than academic interest.

A nation’s demographic character is one of the two factors driving its economic growth. The size of a nation’s working age population multiplied by its rate of productivity determines its growth potential.

The working age population in China — the world’s No. 2 economic power — is shrinking. So is the world’s third largest economy, Japan, as well as Germany, all of Europe, India and China.In contrast, growth in the U.S. labor force is expected to stay flat for the next decade, when the echo-boom kicks in and continues through 2049. . For the next generation or two of American, the growth in the working age population could figure prominently in the future of the wealth of the nation. The nation’s underlying demographic character is a strong financial economic fundamental for long-term investors in America but have you ever seen it covered in the financial press? We sponsor this financial advisor news service to provide independent, prudent, professional research for long term investors every week.

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