Foresight 2020: Economic, industry and corporate trends

An Economist Intelligence Unit white paper

From security threats to ageing populations, education requirements to healthcare costs, governments and public agencies will struggle with an array of profound challenges over the next 15 years.

By 2020, for instance, the world’s developed nations—including the US, western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan—will have no choice but to confront the problem of demographics. “Five years from now the baby boomers will begin retiring”, says John Rother, policy director at the American Association for Retired People (AARP). “Over the next 10-25 years, there’s going to be a lot more people retiring than there are entering the workforce.”

As the size of the workforce declines, funding for healthcare and pension assistance will shrink. Compounding the problem is an erosion in the private sector’s willingness to deliver defined healthcare and retirement benefits to the majority of their employees, as well as longer mortality and rising healthcare costs. Governments will wrestle with a number of options, from higher retirement ages to tax-free income beyond the minimum retirement age, but the fundamental and unappetising choice is between higher taxes and lower benefits.

These and other critical issues for governments and societies are reviewed in this 96-page report, which assesses likely changes to the global economy, to eight major industries and to corporate structures between now and 2020.

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