The OECD report suggests that the global economy is driven by a number of deep-seated and likely long-lasting trends. If these trends – including ageing, skill-biased technological change, globalisation, and rising environmental pressures – persist, they will have a profound effect on the world economy. Each of these trends by themselves raises difficult policy challenges. But it is the interactions between them that will create the most potent dilemmas for policy makers. This note describes how the world may look in 2060 if these trends were prolonged. This should not be interpreted as a forecast but only as a description of how these past trends may generate new policy challenges, both on a national and international level, if they were to continue. Given the nature of the exercise, numerical estimates are provided only to give a sense of the scale of potential challenges.
The report lists a number of main findings. Global economic growth will slow from 3.6% in 2010-2020 to 2.4% in 2050-2060 due to ageing and the deceleration of emerging economies. The global economic balance will shift away from the OECD area, though the emerging economies will homogenise into an economic structure similar to the OECD.
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