THE NEXT GENERATION:

THE NEXT GENERATION:

A FORECAST FOR THE YEAR 2020

MITCHEL F. BLOOM, PH.D., CFP

BLOOM FORECASTING, INC.

AUGUST 30, 1994

ABSTRACT: A projection and analysis of world and U.S. selected trends to the year 2020 will be discussed in two separate articles. This article, the first, deals with world trends and includes population, food supplies, crowding, energy production and motor vehicles. A second article will deal with U.S. trends. It will cover projections of retirees, ethnics, immigration, educated working women, occupations to enter and to avoid, crime, the Puget Sound region, lawyers, defense expenditures, industrial patents, and pupil performance on international tests.

This article gives a view of what life will be like for the next generation. It is a surprise free forecast, i.e., an extrapolation of trends of the past 30 years, 1960 to 1990, over the next 30 years, 1990 to the year 2020. Past trend lines have been extended using the simplest of methods. Where past trends are approximately linear, extrapolation has been made by assuming constant increment per year; where exponentially increasing, extrapolation has assumed constant growth rate per year. If the Bureau of Census has made projections of a trend, the middle projection has been used; if the U.N. has made a projection, it also has been used where appropriate. Neither seasonality nor cycles have been factored into the forecasts. The aim was to present a general picture, not a detailed description. My scenario is what the world will look like in the year 2020 if selected past trends continue into the future, all other things remaining the same which, of course, they will not.

There is no end to a forecast of this type; hundreds of trends could be selected for extension into the future. One topic leads to another and at some point the writer must arbitrarily decide that the time has come to cut off the research. As a result of the selection and time limits, health, housing, economic or trade projections, which are so very important in gaining an appreciation of a future society, were not included.

Before I started on this paper, my original thesis was that the end of the cold war was a watershed, a significant event in human history. What I learned upon looking at the data was that most trends that were projected to the year 2020 began at least two decades before 1990. In other words, the end of the cold war was not a cataclysmic shock to the world system strongly affecting major trends. It may have slightly changed the slope of some of the world's trends but did not significantly affect their magnitude. Thus, immediately upon beginning my research, I had to discard the oft-repeated shibboleth that changes we are currently seeing have come about because of the end of the cold war. These changes have much deeper and older roots which have their origins in the industrial revolution, public health, urbanization, and the spread of science, technology, capitalism, democracy and the information revolution worldwide, but which are beyond the scope of this paper.

It is your children for whom this forecast is really intended. It is they who will be your age when the year 2020 rolls around, assuming you are in the age group 30-45 years old and your children are ages 5 to 15. What kind of a world will they live in the year 2020 when they reach your present age 25 years from now? Will they have a job? Will they be able to afford a house, a yearly vacation? Will their children get as good education as they received? As you received? In short, will they have about the same quality of life as you have today? Or will they have a much better or much worse life quality than you have now?

To answer that question, a number of trends had to be selected, massaged and then projected into the future. First, the trend variables were selected, those key indicators of change that can provide a "feel" for the nature of a future society? Second, a small number of simple methods of extrapolation were used once the trend was selected. Third, with the projections in the year 2020 in hand, together with knowledge of the past trend values in 1960 and 1990, it was possible to compare future to present and future to past. That determined the skeleton of the forecast. Finally, flesh was added to the forecast by attempting to qualitatively interpret what life would be like as indicated by future trend values in the year 2020.

WORLD POPULATION GROWTH AND THE MALTHUSIAN TRAP

As a result of the world population trend forecast, the following conclusions are reached:

By 2020, three persons will be living for every two in the world today.

We will have a world population of 8.3 billion people by 2020 versus 5.3 billion today.

The third world will account for 95% of world population growth from 1990 to 2020.

Implications are hopeful for both rice and wheat production requirements - implying once again an escape from the Malthusian abyss.

Table 1 displays the world population projections to the year 2020 extending the trend from 1960 through 1990. While the world's population is projected to grow by 56% over the next 30 years, the third world is expected to grow by 68% over the same period.

Will we fall into the Malthusian abyss, where population outruns the food supply and famine and depopulation result? Or will technology come to the rescue as it has throughout recent history?

From 1960 through 1990, wheat production increased 147 percent and rice production increased 121 percent. To maintain current yearly wheat and rice consumption per person, the annual of production of rice and wheat must increase by only 56 percent in the next 30 years, a target which should be relatively easy to achieve since it means a less than 2 percent per year increase in both food grains.

Avoiding the Malthusian abyss of population outrunning food supplies will be more likely with the application of new biogenetic techniques of food production from first world laboratories to third world agriculture. These techniques will be fighting a battle against soil erosion, depletion of freshwater sources, and increasing requirements for fertilizers and pesticides. Agricultural improvements will be taking place during a period in which world population is rapidly expanding but also improving rapidly in literacy and knowledge. It is not clear that the new techniques will be made available and affordable to the third world's rural dwellers who need them most.

In addition to the high cost of new biogenetic methods, more mundane and familiar causes of hunger will persist. Food shortages will result in local areas over the next three decades with disturbing regularity. Periodic local famines are expected to occur in remote areas with poor infrastructure, impoverished populations, and incompetent governments, as is taking place in Africa today. The world will have the food but due to politics, bureaucracy, funding, weather, roads, storage and corruption, the food will not reach the the millions who will die of starvation or related diseases.

TABLE 1

WORLD POPULATION GROWTH AND THE MALTHUSIAN TRAP

________________________________________________________________________

World World World World

3rd Wheat Rice Wheat Rice

World World (Mill. (Mill. Per Per

Pop. Pop. Metric Metric Person Person

Year (Bill.) (Bill.) Tons) Tons) (Tons) (Tons)

========================================================================

1960 2.99 2.1 244 236 82 79

1980 4.45 3.3 445 399 100 90

1990 5.29 4.1 602 522 113 99

2020 8.25 6.4 932 814 113 99

========================================================================

Sources: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1982-1983, p.855, Table 1513; 1991, p.830, Table 1434; 1993, p.839, Table 1372.

POPULATION IN THIRD WORLD CITIES

To get a hint of the impending congestion and crowding in third world cities, first look at population growth in five large megalopolises from widely separated locations and different cultures: Mexico City (Mexico), Sao Paulo (Brazil), Calcutta (India), Jakarta (Indonesia) and Lagos (Nigeria). These cities are currently among the world's largest urban areas. Projections are based on past growth rates and U.N. projections. Table 2 displays the past trends and the projections to year 2020 along with percent growth rates and ratios of persons in year 2020 for every person residing in the city in 1990.

Examining the data, the conclusions are obvious and frightening. Cities in the third world are expanding at rates much greater than their nation's population. We might ask why this is occurring and will continue to occur in the foreseeable future. First, the major city offers the newcomer, arriving from a rural location, what cities have always offered immigrants: economic opportunity, education, jobs, and excitement. The fact that these cities also offer newcomers deplorable living conditions, which are likely to get worse before they get better, does little to discourage them from moving in from the countryside. Expect to see enormous third world slums with appalling filth and poverty, but yet providing the only hope to millions of people. If they had not made the move, these people would starve on farms that are incapable of producing enough food because of water shortage, soil depletion, smaller plots, onerous debts, and a unaffordable requirements for fertilizers, pesticides and new crop strains capable of higher yields. (See the book and film, City of Joy, for a dramatization of one family's migration to Calcutta from a rural area.)

TABLE 2

POPULATION GROWTH IN FIVE OF THE WORLDS LARGEST URBAN AREAS

________________________________________________________________________

Mexico Sao

City Paulo Calcutta Jakarta Lagos

YEAR (Mill.) (Mill.) (MILL.) (MILL.) (MILL.)

1960 4.9 4.7 5.5 2.7 0.8

1980 14.0 12.5 9.0 6.4 4.5

1990 19.4 18.4 11.8 9.4 7.6

2020 54.4 52.8 27.0 29.2 49.4

City Gr/Yr* 4.01% 4.03% 2.65% 3.97% 6.87%

Ratio ** 5:2 5:2 2:1 3+:1 6+:1

Mexico Brazil India Indonesia Nigeria

National Gr/Yr # 2.1% 1.7% 1.8% 1.6% 3.0%

Nat. Pop. 2020 (Mill.)## 159 245 1,396 302 288

========================================================================

Notes:

* = Growth rate per year of city over 1960-1990 period

and assumed to remain constant to year 2020.

** = Ratio of persons in city in 2020 to persons in city

in 1990.

# = The average annual national population growth rate (percent) from 1960-1990, assumed to continue to year 2020.

## = The national population in the year 2020 (millions)

assuming the average annual national population growth rate that occurred from 1960-1990 continues over 1990-2020.

========================================================================

Sources: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1990, p.837, Table 1441.

CROWDING IN THIRD WORLD CITIES

Crowding and congestion is a function of density. One measure of density, admittedly crude, is the numbers of persons per square mile of urban space. It is crude because it is quite possible to accommodate large numbers of people in small urban areas with a high quality of life using technology and intelligent, purposeful planning, as done in Singapore. Thus far, however, Singaporean political will and discipline are not evident in the third world to any great extent (nor in the first world, one might add).

In the next thirty years crowding will have become a serious problem in high growth third world cities like Jakarta, Calcutta and Lagos. What the consequences of such crowding will be can only be guessed on the basis of animal studies. From Calhoun's experiments, we learn that when rats are allowed to multiply indefinitely in a fixed enclosure and are continuously supplied with sufficient food, they develop serious pathological behavior. As population increases, females lose the ability care for their young ones. Male youths are forced out of family corners to congregate in a no-man's land at the center of the enclosure where they engage in hostile behavior toward each other. Population begins a rapid decline because females stop reproducing and caring for the young rats. Eventually the colony dies out.

We would expect the cities to grow in area as newcomers settle in squatter settlements outside the urbanized boundaries of the cities. But this growth may encroach on suburbs newly built to accommodate the rising middle classes, their new homes and their cars. This brings into sharp focus the needs of newcomers against the rights of those who have climbed several rungs higher on the economic ladder and who most likely possess greater political power as a result. Thus, while space to house newcomers within a city's boundary may be possible in the 1990's as newcomers arrive in droves, it will be much more difficult in 2020 as available urban land is occupied by a rising middle class.

As some newcomers jam into central cities, others will find shelter in squatter settlements on the outer reaches of the urban area. To reach the city for jobs and education, newcomers will place a heavy burden on transportation systems - roads, rail, bus systems, and jitneys - causing congestion of unimaginable magnitudes. Enormous investments for upgrading the transportation infrastructure will be needed in these cities and their outlying areas. The sources of these funds are not readily apparent.

In Table 3, the consequences in terms of urban area per person can be seen. For Mexico City, the best of the five cities, the urban area per person will have decreased, from 1960 to 2020, from 2980 to 268 square feet. For Lagos, the shrinkage of area per person is more dramatic over the same period, going from 2000 square feet to 32 square feet or a square area of 5.6 feet on a side by year 2020.

Another way to look at crowding is the number of persons per square mile. For comparison purposes, in 1992 New York City had 11,482 persons per square mile while London had 10,490. Singapore had 35,164 persons per square mile while Hong Kong - with a high living standard - had an astounding 250,524, the highest of any city.

If population projections are correct, then Mexico City will have by 2020 a density of 104 thousand persons per square mile. Sao Paulo will be next with 117 thousands, followed by Calcutta with 129 thousands. The crowding will be much more serious in Jakarta which is projected to have 384 thousand persons per square mile and will be mind-numbing in Lagos where it is projected to have 882 thousand persons per square mile. In both Jakarta and Lagos, deleterious effects of crowding and congestion will probably prevent urban densities from reaching such high levels. A recent example of the kind of pathological behavior that can occur in a human society was reported on the reception you can expect to receive upon arrival at the Lagos airport.

Canadians provide embassy vehicles to collect Canadian citizens arriving at the airport. Passengers who don't have such an arrangement may find themselves driven into the back streets of Lagos by a "cabdriver" who robs them at gunpoint. "If you're lucky, you'll end up a few hours later in front of your embassy in your underwear... It's the most dangerous airport in Africa that's not in a war zone." (The Wall Street Journal, June 1, 1994, page 1)

The State Department has put Lagos at the top of its list of airports so unsafe that it bans direct flights there and posts warning signs at all U.S. airports.

The bottom line for the world in 2020 is as follows:

World's population will increasingly be concentrated in Asia, Africa, and Latin America -- and especially in the major cities of the third world countries in those regions. People will pour into these cities from a depleted, impoverished and over-crowded rural environment. Population crush will be pushing limits of human stress endurance and of housing and infrastructure capacity. In those third world cities, where increasingly the world's youthful ethnic population will live, dense vehicular and pedestrian traffic will continue throughout day and night causing enormous noise and air pollution. Sewage systems and water supplies will regularly break down. Rolling electricity brownouts will be the norm. In times of shock (floods, earthquakes, typhoons, riots) these systems, barely being able to operate under optimum conditions, will totally collapse, which will result in human disasters overwhelming any restorative or ameliorative measures attempted by the government.

TABLE 3

CROWDING IN FIVE OF THE WORLD'S LARGEST URBAN AREAS

________________________________________________________________________

Mexico Sao

City Paulo Calcutta Jakarta Lagos

Year Variable (Mill) (Mill) (Mill) (Mill) (Mill)

========================================================================

1960 Pop.(Mill) 4.9 4.7 5.5 2.7 0.8

Area (Sq.Ft.) 14.6X10⁹ 12.6X10⁹ 5.8X10⁹ 2.1X10⁹ 1.6X10⁹

Area/Capita 2980 2681 1054 777 2000

Area (Sq.Miles) 522 451 209 76 56

Persons/Sq.Mile 9,387 22,488 26,316 35,526 14,286

1990 Pop.(Mill.) 19.4 18.4 11.8 9.4 7.6

Area (Sq.Ft.) 14.6X10⁹ 12.6X10⁹ 5.8X10⁹ 2.1X10⁹ 1.6X10⁹

Area/Capita 753 649 492 223 210

Area (Sq.Miles) 522 451 209 76 56

Persons/Sq.Mile 37,165 40,798 56,459 123,684 135,714

2020 Pop.(Mill.) 54.4 52.8 27.0 29.2 49.4

Area (Sq.Ft.) 14.6X10⁹ 12.6X10⁹ 5.8X10⁹ 2.1X10⁹ 1.6X10⁹

Area/Capita 268 239 215 72 32

Area (Sq.Miles) 522 451 209 76 56

Persons/Sq.Mile 104,215 117,073 129,187 384,211 882,143 ========================================================================

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1993, p.845, Table 1377.

This is indeed a bleak picture when viewed from a middle class American's perspective. Neverthless, it offers hope to the rural dweller unable to see his way out of steadily worsening conditions in the countryside.

WORLD LITERACY

World illiteracy past trends and projections are shown in Table 4. The good news is that the world percentage illiterate adults is projected to steadily decrease from 25.7% in 1990 to 18.9% by 2020. The bad news is that the absolute number of illiterate adults will actually increase by about 100 million persons. This is because the world population of adults will increase faster than higher literacy rates can reduce the illiterate adult population. With rapid population growth in the third world, we cannot get ahead of the population power curve with respect to one of the most important indicators of social betterment, the ability to read and write.

By 2020, this means that 780 million adults will not be able to function even rudimentarily in the information age: reading instructions on how to improve farming methods; teaching themselves to install/repair machinery and equipment; adopting public health and family planning measures; or simply reading and writing messages to and from others. When reading and writing are denied, access to the personal computer is denied as well, thereby excluding the illiterate from using the most important thinking invention of the 20th century.

The above forecast may be conservative. Stromquist,in World Literacy in the Year 2000, comments on illiteracy rates and their consequences:

It is estimated that in less than 10 years from now, the world will have 1 billion illiterates, 98 percent of whom will be in developing regions.

The role of literacy as a prerequisite for the acquisition of other skills and the development of more rational attitudes is universally accepted. In today's rapidly advancing technological society, the written word has become the dominant mode of complex communication; those without the ability to read and write will be condemned to the lowest roles in society.

Obtaining world illiteracy rates posed something of a challenge despite the fact that illiteracy is well-defined: the inability to read and write a simple sentence in one's own language above the age of 15. Although illiteracy rates are collected and reported by country, neither the U.N. nor the U.S. government summarizes the data to arrive at a world total. The CIA, which compiles a World Factbook, only recently began to estimate illiteracy for the world as a whole. Its 1990 estimate of 26% closely agreed with

UNESCO's projection of 25.7% made in 1978 for 1990.

TABLE 4

WORLD ILLITERACY

____________________________________________________________

World Worldwide

Literacy Number of

Rate Illiterates

Year (Percent) (Millions)

======================================================

1970 32.5 569

1980 28.9 627

1990 25.7 683

2000 23.4 732

2010 21.1 761

2020 18.9 780

======================================================

Sources: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1982-1983, p.863, Table 1522. The 1980 and 1990 illiteracy rates were projections. The 1990 projected rate agreed closely with the CIA's estimate made in 1993.

The forecast in Table 4 shows a downward trend in the percentage of persons illiterate. Stromquist has observed a disquieting, opposite trend, however, in the case of women in developing countries. Women, she claims, constitute the majority of illiterates in most developing societies. Moreover, the numbers of illiterate women have been increasing not only in absolute but also in relative terms. They represent 63 percent of the illiterates in 1983, up from 58 percent in 1960. Two of every three adult women in Africa and one of every two in Asia are illiterate. In the African and Asian areas, UNESCO reports that there is a literacy gap of 21 percentage points in favor of men.

NEW JOBS FOR THE WORLD'S YOUTH

In the year 2000, the world population under 5 years of age is projected to be 10.6% of the total population of 6.3 billion persons or roughly 660 million people. Each year from 2020 onward about one-fifth of that five year age group, or about 130 million young adults, will enter the world's work force.

Let us further assume that one-half of the women, who in turn comprise one-half of the 130 million, decide not to work but to get married and raise families. That leaves approximately 100 million new jobs to be found annually for the new entrants into the labor force in the year 2020 and beyond. Where will the capital investment come from to create these jobs? Keep in mind that over 95% of these new entrants will enter the job market in the third world, probably looking for work in the overcrowded third world cities. Many of them will be barely literate as they come in from the countryside. Their best hope, under global, unregulated, export-oriented capitalism, is to work in a factory in a large city, at a job in which they will live in dormitories, fed minimally in canteens, paid barely subsistence wages, and worked 12 to 15 hours per day, with no immediate chance to improve their lot but also with no better alternatives on the horizon.

More cheap labor is on the way. As the number of working-age people worldwide jumps to five billion from three billion by 2025, 90% of the increase will occur in developing countries, say Columbia University's David Bloom and Adi Brender in a Population Reference Bureau report. The economists predict developing countries' share of the world labor force will rise to more than 80% from 75% (Wall Street Journal, December 21, 1993).

Indeed, many of the new labor entrants in the third world will have fallen through the cracks, past gaping holes in the extended family safety net, as soon they board the jammed public transport for the nearest megalopolis. Under these conditions, they may think, and rightly so, that any risk is worth taking the obvious next step, to emigrate to any first world country for any job at any wage. By 2020 be prepared for an inundation of desperate immigrants from the third world, shut out from jobs in their home countries and with nothing to lose by illegally crossing international borders.

WORLD POLLUTION

World energy production has increased over the past 30 years at a 2% per year rate. If this rate continues for the next 30 years, it implies an 81% increase in primary energy production by the year 2020. Most of this increase will occur in the third world. The developed countries have leveled off in energy consumption and production because of conservation, environmental laws, and changing from a smokestack to a service economy.

With an increase of 81% in energy production over 30 years, assuming third world power plants and factories will be as efficient and clean as current first world plants, we would expect an increase of over 80% in air pollution caused by power generation alone as shown in Table 5.

TABLE 5

PRIMARY ENERGY PRODUCED IN THE WORLD

_________________________________________________________

Primary

Energy

Produced

YEAR (Billions of

Metric Tons of

Coal Equivalent)

=======================================

1970 7.0

1980 9.3

1990 10.4

1995 11.8

2020 18.8

=======================================

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1990, p.853, Table 1471.

MOTOR VEHICLES

Third world motor vehicles are assumed in the following forecast to pollute at the same rate per vehicle as first world motor vehicles. If so, the projected increase in the number of motor vehicles in the world and in two selected, large-population nations provides an indication of the degradation of the quality of air in the third world cities.

Third world cities will become unnavigable. Gridlock will be the rule. Automobiles will have their numbers controlled or banned, or made pollution free; otherwise, the air will become a noxious soup with millions suffering respiratory illness, especially the elderly and small children.

Table 6 shows the projection of car registrations to the year 2020. Numbers of cars world wide are predicted to increase from just over 500 million in 1987 to 1.8 billion by 2020. For every car on the road today, the world will have nearly three more in about thirty years. The increases in India and China are even more astounding. If current trends continue, India will have nine times more cars in 2020 than in 1987 assuming the growth rate continues at 6.6% per year. Worse still, China will have 25 times more cars assuming a mere 10% per year growth rate over the same period. This assumption lowers the past growth rate of nearly 15% over the past 30 years because such a growth rate cannot be conceivably sustained for the next thirty years.

TABLE 6

MOTOR VEHICLE REGISTRATIONS

IN THE WORLD AND IN SELECTED COUNTRIES

________________________________________________________

Year World Car China Car India Car

Registrations Registrations Registrations

(Millions) (Millions) (Millions)

========================================================

1975 328 0.7 1.4

1987 515 4.1 2.9

1995 693 8.8 4.8

2020 1788 111 25.6

% Growth Rate 3.77% 10.0% 6.6%

Assumed

========================================================

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1990, p.843, Table 1453.