There are so many of us. The "great depression" of the 30's and the world war that followed it severely reduced the birth rate in many nations, particularly in North America and Europe. The period following the end of the war saw a massive increase in the birth rate, thus the "Baby Boom". That increase continued for many years. The result is bizarre. For the first time in human history, major nations have more people who are 40 than 4 years old, more who are 50 than 5. If anything like this ever occurred in the past, it might have resulted from a deadly childhood disease, but this time, it happened because people wanted it to happen. Let's look at the results.

 

Directly below is a traditional "population pyramid". This one is for India in 2009. Note how the largest age group is at the bottom and each one above it becomes smaller as people pass away as they grow older.

Now let's take a look at the population pyramid for the United States. Notice how radically different it is from the traditional "pyramid" found in India and nearly every nation in the past.

It's not just the United States. Here is a sampling of other nations.

Don't find your home nation there? Perhaps you will find it below.

That "bulge" in the middle of the pyramids above may look stable and unmoving. Not so. It moves constantly with the passage of time. It describes our future as much as it does our present.

Traditionally, the base of a population pyramid is made up of those younger people who can support the smaller groups at the top. But the base in many of our nations looks as if it could be crushed by the upper levels.

How depressing. Simply by being alive, we are a problem. What can we do about it?

We can begin by recognizing the challenge, as we do here visually. Then we can commit ourselves to doing something about it that, at one and the same time, secures our individual futures, helps secure the future of our home nations, and brightens the future of all of us in this global community.

Avoiding the Retirement Bubble is dedicated to that goal.

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