demographics

If you've seen rthe musical Monty Python's Spamalot you know the song "He Is Not Dead Yet."  It first appears early in Act I and it's hard to get out of your head once you hear it.

It's also seems to be my personal theme these days as I sense I'm being increasingly ignored because I'm no longer in the target demographic.  Network and cable television don't appear to care that I still watch and want to be entertained.  Stores at the mall may want my business but they don't do much to get it.  Radio?  Let's not even go there.

So...as the fist in a series of posts on this subject...several notes to all CEOs, marketers, movie studios, product developers, investment professionals, etc.

1.  Not only am I not yet dead, but I earn and spend more now than I have ever earned and spent before.

Here is some interesting research, summarized in this month's NBER Digest:

In the long run, low rates of fertility are associated with diminished economic growth, according to a new study by NBER Research Associate David Bloom and his co-authors David Canning, Günther Fink, and Jocelyn Finlay. In The Cost of Low Fertility in Europe (NBER Working Paper No. 14820), they observe that in the short term, low fertility rates raise per capita income by lowering families’ costs of child-rearing and boosting the share of working-age people. But as that working-age population moves into retirement, the number of workers who replace them will shrink. So, whatever short-term boon European nations may have gained from low youth dependency will be overwhelmed eventually by the economic burdens of old-age dependency.