Storms Ahead

Alright, we're almost finished Neil Howe's and Richard Jackson's - Global Aging and the Crisis of the 2020s:

A number of demographic storms are now brewing in different parts of the developing world. Consider China, which may e the first country to grow old before it grows rich. China's coming age wave may weaken the two pillars of the current regime's legitmacy: rapidly rising GDP and social stability (by 2030 it will be an older country than the US). By the 2020s, Russia, along with the rest of Eastern Europe, will be in the midst of an extended population decline as steep or steeper than any in the developed world. Of course, some regions of the developing world will remain extremely young in the 2020s.

Meanwhile, many fast modernizing countries where fertility has fallen very recently and very steeply will experience a sudden resurgence of youth in the 2020s. The echo booms will be especially large in Pakistan and Iran, countries whose social fabric is already strained by rapid development. One country teeters on the brink of chaos, while the other aspires to regional hegemony. One already has nuclear weapons, while the othe seems likely to obtain them.

GB