San Diego Member Alan Nevin Releases Book - The Next Half Century

<p>The Next Half Century is a book about the world tomorrow. It is a compelling story of the future that you and your heirs will experience. </p> <p>It is a book about trends, past and future, based on research drawn from demography and, to some degree, real estate. I am both a demographer and a real estate economist and try to blend the two practices in order to project the future. </p> <p>Demography is the study of people: how they live, how they grow, and how they fit within the societies they live in. If you know demography, you will know the future of the world. </p> <p>The book does have a lot of numbers, but in the words of statistician W. Edwards Deming, “without data you’re just another person with an opinion.” </p> <p>I am not an academician and therefore this is not a textbook. It is a rather readable story about the future of the United States and its growth patterns (with an emphasis on the states that are at the heart of the economy), and it also looks at four population centers that are large enough to make a difference in the world tomorrow: China, India, Russia, and the European Union/United Kingdom. </p> <p>Pessimism blankets much of the world today, much of it relating to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Some of it relates to China’s threats to Taiwan and North Korea’s playing with nuclear weapons. </p> <p>I don’t want to belittle that triad of misery, but we have to look beyond that to envision a world that is on the cusp of massive improvements in economics, education, and lifestyle. </p> <p>It is a world where in the 1990s only 1.0% of the population had access to the World Wide Web and now two-thirds of the world can see what life is like in the First World countries and that whets the appetites of the Third World countries. It is that same Web capability that will foster those Third World countries to crave education and a better way of life. In the past three years, more than one billion people have gained access to the Web. </p> <p>Over the next half century, we will see many Third World countries become Second World countries and even a few Second World countries become First World countries.<br /> Economically speaking, we will see a dramatic increase in world gross domestic product, a meaningful reduction in fertility rates, a lessening of starvation, improving literacy, and the uplifting of the lifestyles of billions of people. </p> <p>Much has been written about the potential failure to feed the masses in Third World countries. It is my contention that the severe reduction in fertility will mean that there will be a food supply/demand balance in the decades ahead. </p> <p>Equally positive: it will be the First World countries that provide the tools, the education, and the financing to lift the Third World countries out of the misery they suffer today.</p> <p>One-third of the countries in the world today are “Third World” and 25% of them Second World. The opportunities to move these countries up one notch is remarkable and exciting.<br /> And, finally, the United States will be at the forefront of the massive economic changes that lie before us. </p> <p>It is these five entities that account for a majority of the world’s production of goods, including oil, merchandise, and brainpower. They are the powers that the United States must deal with on a daily basis if it is to remain in a dominant position as the world’s No. 1 power.</p> <p>A major part of the next half century will witness the economic growth of the Third World countries—countries that will experience a substantial decline in fertility coupled with a major increase in education, employment, and incomes. </p> <p>Many of these Third World countries will become Second World countries and be in the same league as China and India. They will produce the goods that are required to satisfy the needs of an expanding world. Billions of persons in these Third World countries have access to the Web and can now see how the rest of the world lives and they will want to emulate us.</p>