Issue link: https://info.seic.com/i/1513995
2024 SEI ® Data as of 12/31/2023 unless otherwise indicated. 6 retirement age. Participation rates for those 65 and over is less than 20%. According to Pew Research, roughly one-fifth of the U.S. population will be retired by 2030, with all baby boomers at or above the age of 65 at that time. The demographic outlook is even more troubling for Europe and some Asian countries, especially Japan and South Korea. Exhibit 8 highlights the old-age dependency ratio for several developed and emerging countries. The dependency ratio is defined as the number of individuals 65 and over per 100 people of working age (those aged 20 to 64). The dependency ratio is already above 40% for Germany and Italy and a stunning 54% for Japan as of 2022. By comparison, the U.S. (30.4%), Canada (32.3%) and the U.K. (33.6%) appear to be in a better demographic position, although their old-age dependency ratios most likely will continue to rise in the years ahead. By 2050, the dependency ratio in Japan is estimated to reach 80%. South Korea's ratio is expected to be nearly as high as Japan's, followed closely by Spain. The U.S. (40.4%), Canada (44.9%), and the U.K. (40.4%) again look much better in comparison to the countries of Western Europe and East Asia. Exhibit 8: Lots of gray Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, SEI. Transitory disinflation? Although we acknowledged this time last year that inflation was trending lower, the rate of increase has decelerated more dramatically in recent months than we had expected. Exhibit 9 tracks the so-called Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP). This inflation statistic provides a more comparable measure of different countries' inflation rates than the price data individually issued by the various countries themselves. 1 The chart shows that the U.S. led the global acceleration of inflation in 2021 and 2022; in 2023, it has been leading the way down. Both the U.S. and the eurozone have enjoyed a fall in HICP inflation back toward the 2% level, measured on a year-over year basis. The U.K. and France have been lagging in terms of inflation levels, but have, nonetheless, registered a rather sharp slowdown from their inflation-rate peaks. 1 The HICP for the U.S., for example, excludes the costs of owner-occupied housing (one of the more important drivers of the U.S. Department of Labor's consumer-price index). Under the HICP methodology, the rental-equivalent cost for owner-occupied housing is considered an investment, not consumption, so is left out of the calculation; only the actual cost of renting is included. 0 20 40 60 80 100 Number of individuals aged 65+ per 100 working persons aged 20 to 64 Old-age dependency ratio 2000 2022 2027 2050