Comment | Con Keating


Longevity: A maturing problem Con Keating con2.keating@brightonrockgroup.co.uk


Con Keating is head of research at BrightonRock Group


This month, Con Keating looks at the investment challenges that rising longevity and a declining population might bring.


This has been a summer of extremes and surprises. If these climatological events, the wild- fires, storm-force winds, torrential rainfall and record temperatures are harbingers of an Anthropocene epoch, new risk management techniques and structures are needed. These pose an immediate challenge for the engineers and urban planners.


The science of global warming and climate change is incontestable. It is, of course, predicated upon an ever-growing population and yet more urbanisation; the history of the past two centuries. However, it seems that the UN’s central popula- tion projection of nearly 10 billion people by 2050 is excessive. The cause for the doubt surrounding this projection is rapidly falling human fertility.


18 | portfolio institutional | September 2019 | issue 86


In Europe, Japan, China, Brazil and India this is already below replacement rates. Fertility in Africa has fallen dramatically but remains above replacement rates.


The dramatic improvements in infant mortality during the past century have played a part in the declining size of families; the spare to the heir is redundant if the heir is unlikely to die in child- hood. It appears that high female literacy and education lead inexorably to lower fertility rates. The variation we observe in the timing of decline is a product of the differing economic and social circumstances of the countries considered, but it is by no means true any longer that a country needs to be modern and highly developed for declining fertility to be evident. Based on current trends, it appears that the peak global population


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