Do demographics really condemn us to a bleak future?

Many commenters have predicted a bleak future for the West based on ageing populations and falling asset prices. But the future might not be quite as grim as a lot of forecasters think, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

Do demographics drive markets? George Magnus of UBS, who I interviewed last week, isn't convinced.

He accepts that the "halcyon era of sustained equity and real estate price appreciation from the 1980s until the financial crisis" happened just as the baby boomers of the 1960s entered the work force. Clearly this brought women, and well educated women at that, into the workforce and meant the quantity and the quality of labour rose at the same time.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.