The idea that ‘demography is destiny’ is used a lot by economists to justify upbeat economic growth forecasts for a number of emerging nations, and pessimistic outlooks for several developed states. My colleagues and I at Business Monitor International (BMI) certainly keep demographic projections in mind when looking at long-term forecasts. Usefully, the UN World… [Read more]

Most governments around the world seek to maximise economic growth so that their countries can achieve a higher level of development and their citizens can become wealthier. At the same time, they must be mindful that growth does not bring with it inflation. However there is a major exception to these axioms: Japan. While Japan… [Read more]

On Friday I outlined how the economic problems in Latvia were impacting upon the political scene. So, as I glanced around the crisis-hit countries of Europe for signs of social and political changes, I chanced upon recently released Icelandic immigration figures, which show a massive turnaround in local migration trends occurred in 2008. Immigration fell… [Read more]

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) recently unveiled a bold proposal to take in 10 million immigrants between now and 2050, so that they will constitute 10% of the national population by that date. The idea is to make Japan a multi-ethnic society, and infuse the labour force with young people to offset the country’s… [Read more]