The Great Demographic Reversal : Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival

Title: The Great Demographic Reversal : Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival
Author: Charles Goodhart, Manoj Pradhan
ISBN: 3030426564 / 9783030426569
Format: Hard Cover
Pages: 260
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2020
Availability: 15-30 days

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This original and panoramic book proposes that the underlying forces of demography and globalisation will shortly reverse three multi-decade global trends – it will raise inflation and interest rates, but lead to a pullback in inequality.  “Whatever the future holds”, the authors argue, “it will be nothing like the past”. Deflationary headwinds over the last three decades have been primarily due to an enormous surge in the world’s available labour supply, owing to very favourable demographic trends and the entry of China and Eastern Europe into the world’s trading system.  This book demonstrates how these demographic trends are on the point of reversing sharply, coinciding with a retreat from globalisation.  The result? Ageing can be expected to raise inflation and interest rates, bringing a slew of problems for an over-indebted world economy, but is also anticipated to increase the share of labour, so that inequality falls.  Covering many social and politicalfactors, as well as those that are more purely macroeconomic, the authors address topics including ageing, dementia, inequality, populism, retirement and debt finance, among others.  

This book will be of interest and understandable to anyone with an interest on where the world’s economy may be going.

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Chapter 1 : Introduction
Chapter 2 : China: An Historic Mobilisation Ends
Chapter 3 : The Great Demographic Reversal and Its Effect on Future Growth
Chapter 4 : Dependency, Dementia and the Coming Crisis of Caring
Chapter 5 : The Resurgence of Inflation
Chapter 6 : The Determination of (Real) Interest Rates During the Great Reversal
Chapter 7 : Inequality and the Rise of Populism
Chapter 8 : The Phillips Curve
Chapter 9 : ‘Why Didn’t It Happen in Japan?’ A Revisionist History of Japan’s Evolution
Chapter 10 : What Could Offset Global Ageing? India/Africa, Participation and Automation
Chapter 11 : The Debt Trap: Can We Avoid It?
Chapter 12 : A Switch from Debt to Equity Finance?
Chapter 13 : Future Policy Problems: Old Age and Taxes, and the Monetary-Fiscal Clash
Chapter 14 : Swimming Against the (Main)Stream