"The most important single new certainty - if only because there is no precedent for it in all of history - is the collapsing birthrate in the developed world."
When they look to the future, the "graying of society" is one of the few things business people can really count on. It is a trend brought on by a combination of extended life spans and lower birthrates. As renowned management philosopher Peter Drucker writes, "The most important single new certainty – if only because there is no precedent for it in all of history – is the collapsing birthrate in the developed world."
And even this is an understatement because Drucker does not observe that the trend, while most acute in developed nations, also applies to other countries. By 2025, fertility rates in countries representing fully 76% of the world’s population will fall below the replacement rate of 2.1 children born per woman, according to the 1998 World Health Report. We are looking at a truly global change in the makeup of human society.
This change will affect virtually every aspect of society: the family, culture, economics, politics, markets, etc. And, of course, it will have a powerful impact on the management of people, though no one knows exactly what the repercussions of this trend will be. "What is happening now has simply never happened before in the history of the world," says demographer Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. "This is terra incognita."
Just because they’re entering unknown territory, however, doesn’t mean that managers shouldn’t try to envision possible scenarios. Indeed, this is the only way they can begin to experiment with new strategies for coping with these trends. Such strategic thinking may well determine, over the long run, whether the aging of society leads to a time of silver prosperity or an age of gray decline.
