Predictions: Humanity

Prediction: The global Muslim population is projected to grow from 1.6 billion to 2.2 billion (an approximately 35% increase) by 2030.

Who: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, in a report entitled “The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030.”

Why Great: The growth can be attributed to increased life-expectancy rates and better living conditions in many Muslim-majority countries.

BUT… The population growth rate for Muslims is slowing. This decline is also being attributed to better living conditions in many Muslim-majority countries as well as two other developments occurring there: increased educational opportunities for women and greater urbanization.

Bottom Line: The Pew Forum reports that “globally, the Muslim population is forecast to grow at about twice the rate of the non-Muslim population over the next two decades. … If current trends continue, Muslims will make up 26.4% of the world’s total projected population of 8.3 billion in 2030, up from 23.4% of the estimated 2010 world population of 6.9 billion.”

Source: http://pewforum.org/The-Future-of-the-Global-Muslim-Population.aspx

Prediction: The United States will be 20 million college graduates short of demand by 2025.

Who: The Georgetown University Center on Education in the June 27th report “The Undereducated American.”

Why Great: Despite persistent talk of an “education bubble” the report finds that the United States has not been graduating enough college students to meet workforce demand, and this has persisted for more than 30 years now.

BUT… The alternate headline on this trend reads: University Suggests That More Kids Should Attend University.

Bottom Line: We need a more educated workforce. But there may exist multiple paths to reach that goal.

Source: http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/undereducatedpressrelease.pdf

Prediction: Half of the world’s poorest countries can escape poverty by 2020.

Who: UN, report by the Group of Eminent Persons appointed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Why Great: Of the world’s 48 least-developed countries (LDCs), half may be able to achieve poverty-reduction goals within the next 10 years. This will require more-targeted development aid, as well as more advantageous trade agreements (i.e., quota-free access for exports), plus investment in education and agricultural productivity.

Reducing global poverty promises also to significantly reduce conflict. Economic well-being also reduces demographic pressures and could contribute to lowering birthrates in countries least able to support increasing populations.

Many LDCs have made social and economic improvements in the past decade, including trends toward democracy, increasing opportunities for women, and strengthening weak legal and economic institutions.

BUT… Only three out of 51 LDCs have “graduated” from that status since the UN first established the category in 1970.

Bottom Line: Consider fair trade and investment schemes promoting the development of LDCs’ assets, such as strategic minerals, arable land, and eco-resources.

Source: AllAfrica news service (UN), March 29, 2011. http://allafrica.com/stories/201105120527.html

Prediction: Schools won’t have days off for inclement weather anymore. Instead, homebound students and teachers will conduct lessons online, with in-person lessons to resume once the snow/hail/etc. subsides.

Who: Sina (Chinese media company)

Why Great: It is a boost for school productivity if learning continues even when the roads are icy. Also, although the article does not mention this, school systems in heavily polluted areas or areas particularly impacted by climate change will be much better able to protect their students’ health and safety — i.e., they can stay home and learn on those days when smog is acute or floods, heat waves, or other harsh weather is in effect.

BUT… For students to reach their teachers via Internet, they must first have Internet access. Not every rural, inner-city, and low-income home is connected yet (though this is slowly changing, as more Internet services set up shop in low-income communities and more low-income young people acquire inexpensive mobile phone-based Internet connections).

Bottom Line: In teaching, as in any other human activity, it is always good to have a backup plan. Distance learning, which is clearly spreading, could provide schools with a very convenient bad-weather backup — as long as students’ Internet access spreads as quickly.

Source: http://english.sina.com/technology/2011/0517/373795.html

Prediction: India will be the largest country in terms of population in 2050, with China in second place. United States will be the third largest, with 423 million people.

Who: The U.S. Census Bureau’s International Data Base.

Why Notable: According to the census bureau, China’s population seems to be stabilizing, while western Europe’s could slightly rise. In the United States, most of the population growth is occurring and will continue to occur in minority communities.

Also, there will be around 9.4 billion people living on the planet by then.

BUT… A growing population in India could hold the country back economically and foment internal struggles over already limited resources and access to basic necessities. The same holds true for countries in Africa, especially Nigeria and Ethiopia, which according to the census bureau’s projections will experience the largest population growth in the coming decades, percentage-wise. On the other hand, declining birth rates could continue to cause problems in developed countries, particularly Japan and Russia.

Bottom Line: The United States and the world will continue to see demographic shifts. Also, in addition to birth rate, increased life expectancy (particularly in developed countries) is another variable to take into account.

Source: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2080404,00.html

Prediction: Every book will be interactive and cross-platform by 2020.

Who: Author James Warner (All Her Father’s Guns), in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Why Great: Say goodbye to outmoded linear text-based reading. Warner writes, “Future ‘books’ will be bundled with soundtracks, musical leitmotifs, 3-D graphics, and streaming video.” These enhanced objects of desire will also feature built-in social networking functions to provide further distraction from actually having to read them.

BUT… Digital simulations of the analog reading experience will appear in the decades thereafter. Breakthroughs in augmented reality will be able to perfectly recreate the now-illegal process of enjoying an actual book, down to the “sensation of turning the pages, the crack of the spine, and even the occasional paper cut.”

Bottom Line: Warner’s cleverly-argued, well-informed satirical take on the future of books cautions people not to be too quick to champion digital technologies over analog processes.

Source: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2011/3/24warner.html

Prediction: Medicare reform is likely doomed, whether proposed by Democrats or Republicans.

Who: Greg Ip, covering the Peterson Foundation’s fiscal summit for The Economist magazine on May 25th.

Why it’s great: This quote, which sums up the current American Medicare debate with perfect, post-partisan aplomb: “Any serious attempt to reform Medicare is going to be unpopular because it will cost the elderly something, and the elderly are on the way to becoming 30% of the voting population. Thus, the opposing party is inevitably going to use such a proposal to kill the other at the next election without advancing an alternative. And since both parties know this, the only Medicare plans they offer voters will be lemons.”

BUT… Multi-generation families are on the rise. More grandkids taking in elderly relatives could reduce reliance on social safety nets.

Bottom Line: Because no elected politician can afford to alienate the Baby Boomer voting block, Generations X and Y are going to be paying higher taxes for fewer government services than did their parents. At some point, they might decide that’s just not fair.

Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/05/politics_medicare

Prediction: Every book will be interactive and cross-platform by 2020.

Who: Author James Warner (All Her Father’s Guns), in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Why Great: Say goodbye to outmoded linear text-based reading. Warner writes, “Future ‘books’ will be bundled with soundtracks, musical leitmotifs, 3-D graphics, and streaming video.” These enhanced objects of desire will also feature built-in social networking functions to provide further distraction from actually having to read them.

BUT… Digital simulations of the analog reading experience will appear in the decades thereafter. Breakthroughs in augmented reality will be able to perfectly recreate the now-illegal process of enjoying an actual book, down to the “sensation of turning the pages, the crack of the spine, and even the occasional paper cut.”

Bottom Line: Warner’s cleverly-argued, well-informed satirical take on the future of books cautions people not to be too quick to champion digital technologies over analog processes.

Source: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2011/3/24warner.html

Prediction: The number-one factor affecting quality of life for South Koreans in 2040 will be health; employment will drop from first to eighth place.

Who: Choi Hangsub, associate professor of sociology, University of Kookmin, Seoul, South Korea

Background: To foresee how satisfied citizens may be in the future, and to plan how to invest resources to improve quality of life, policy makers must be able to forecast what sectors (e.g., state of the environment, opportunities for leisure, income gaps) will be of greater importance to people in the future. A survey of specialists concluded that, whereas employment was the most important element underlying life satisfaction for Koreans in 2010, that factor will drop in rank to just eighth place by 2040, as concerns over an aging population’s health moves up from second to first place among happiness-seekers’ priorities.

Why Great: Sociologists are warning us that what will make us happy in the future aren’t necessarily the same things that make us happy now (at least according to quality-of-life researchers). As having a family decreases importance in the next 30 years, access to the Internet will increase, suggesting that the impulse for human contact will take on a more mobile character.

BUT… This particular study focused on South Korea, so it is difficult to make broad generalizations. However, the researchers’ point that happy cultures begin with happy citizens is well worth noting.

Bottom Line: Quantification of quality of life (i.e., happiness or life satisfaction) is of growing interest to policy makers and all who study macro trends underlying what we loosely call “progress.” This is a departure from traditional economic theory that looks only at GDP, income, employment, and marriage rates. (For example, those quantifying divorce rates might consider whether the impacts are perceived as positive or negative by the parties involved.)

Source: “Sociological and Futuristic Study on Quality of Life in 2040” by Choi Hangsub in Moving from Vision to Action, edited by Cynthia G. Wagner. (the World Future Society’s 2011 conference volume)

Prediction: The proportion of world population over age 65 will grow to 22.3% by 2100, up from 7.6% in 2010.

Who: UN

Why Great: World population grows two ways: more people being born and fewer people dying. The shift to a more mature world has social, economic, and political implications. More-mature cultures tend to be richer, more stable, and less violent ones.

BUT… More-mature nations tend to be weaker in terms of health and military might, making them vulnerable to threats from younger, poorer nations.

Bottom Line: Immigration is a third way that cultures can balance themselves demographically, as young people seek opportunities in wealthier countries around the world, thus offering a potential solution to the issue of the so-called pensioner crisis.

Source: UN data via The Economist, http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/05/world_population&fsrc=nwl (posted May 13, 2011)

Prediction: In the world’s wealthiest countries, spending on long-term care could double or even triple by 2050.

Who: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in new (May 2011) report, “Help Wanted? Providing and paying for long-term care”

Why Great: Increased longevity is considered good news for individuals but bad news for the institutions that need to pay for their care. The proportion of the frailest elderly in OECD countries (age 80 and older) will grow sharply to 1 in 10 by 2050, up from 1 in 25 in 2010. To meet the care gap, these wealthier societies will become more open to importing care workers as well as innovative technologies such as caregiving robots.

Bottom Line: Individuals, institutions, and governments can all invest now in future care, whether it be improving the health monitoring capability of smart houses and devices or educating a homogenous citizenry about the value of immigrant workers.

Source: http://www.oecd.org/document/12/0,3746,en_21571361_44315115_47904908_1_1_1_1,00.html

Prediction: The Middle East could be the host of a new scientific revolution that fosters huge breakthroughs in renewable energy.

Just as science in Europe was reborn in the seventeenth century following a series of political revolutions, the upheavals now sweeping the Middle East could free the region up for an intellectual liberation and the emergence of a democracy-driven science research base dedicated to people’s needs, contrasting with Western science industries that work primarily at the behest of their corporate and national-security sponsors.

Who: Dan Hind, a British science author and publicist. Commentary ran May 17, 2011, on Al Jazeera.

Why Great: The global implications would be massive: a bastion of fossil fuels becomes the source of solar energy to power the world; a region beset with tens of millions of unemployed and impoverished people could suddenly generate jobs and revenue streams; and R&D industries that are now based mostly in North America and Europe would soon have powerful new potential partners — and potential competitors. Worldwide innovation and economic growth might accelerate, emigration might slow, and terrorist movements would be further marginalized.

BUT… It depends on whether true democracy does take root in the affected countries, and that is far from assured.

Bottom Line: Hind’s vision is very desirable, but it will probably take earnest commitments from players in the Middle East and outside it to make it happen.

Source: Al Jazeera, http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/201151275441474476.html