''Agequake: Riding the Demographic Rollercoaster Shaking Business, Finance and our World '' is a book written by Paul Wallace and published in 1999, that investigates what possible ramifications are likely as a significant and unprecedented portion of the human population

age Age or AGE may refer to: Time and its effects * Age, the amount of time someone or something has been alive or has existed ** East Asian age reckoning, an Asian system of marking age starting at 1 * Ageing or aging, the process of becoming older ...

. The book argues that rising

longevity The word " longevity" is sometimes used as a synonym for "life expectancy" in demography. However, the term ''longevity'' is sometimes meant to refer only to especially long-lived members of a population, whereas ''life expectancy'' is always d ...

and lower

fertility Fertility is the capability to produce offspring through reproduction following the onset of sexual maturity. The fertility rate is the average number of children born by a female during her lifetime and is quantified demographically. Fertili ...

is causing a seismic shift in the profile of populations worldwide, and will be a fundamental force to that will shake business and finance, along with lifestyles and attitudes. Wallace suggests the old bogey of

overpopulation Overpopulation or overabundance is a phenomenon in which a species' population becomes larger than the carrying capacity of its environment. This may be caused by increased birth rates, lowered mortality rates, reduced predation or large scale m ...

is being replaced by a population "implosion". Through using

dependency ratio The dependency ratio is an age-population ratio of those typically not in the labor force (the ''dependent'' part ages 0 to 14 and 65+) and those typically in the labor force (the ''productive'' part ages 15 to 64). It is used to measure the press ...

s (the ratio of non-working dependents to the working population) will lead to a point where workers will be burdened with the fiscal and practical responsibilities of supporting a ballooning population of aged retirees. Society and economy will be affected as the proportion of youth declines - typically the most entrepreneurial, creating and risk taking segment of society. Along with the liquidation of

baby boomer Baby boomers, often shortened to boomers, are the Western demographic cohort following the Silent Generation and preceding Generation X. The generation is often defined as people born from 1946 to 1964, during the mid-20th century baby boom. T ...

assets to pay for their retirements, this is likely to halt economic growth in the future, and

economic stagnation Economic stagnation is a prolonged period of slow economic growth (traditionally measured in terms of the GDP growth), usually accompanied by high unemployment. Under some definitions, "slow" means significantly slower than potential growth as es ...

may be a more likely prospect. Housing prices will plummet, and the world may experience the greatest

bear market A market trend is a perceived tendency of financial markets to move in a particular direction over time. Analysts classify these trends as ''secular'' for long time-frames, ''primary'' for medium time-frames, and ''secondary'' for short time-fram ...

in history. Internationally the relationship between youthful and aggressive

developing world A developing country is a sovereign state with a lesser developed industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. There is also no clear agreem ...

and the rich older

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries ...

(OECD) countries (where elderly women will become an influential constituency) will change.

References

External links

Paul Wallace Profile
Ageing 1999 non-fiction books Economics books Demographic economic problems English-language books {{econ-problem-stub

See also

References

External links