Commentary
Part I discussed tech opportunities in areas like 5-G, cloud computing, healthcare, and finance, especially in insurance. This article examines opportunities for tech in meeting two huge issues facing the world’s economies. One is the growing number of older retirees in populations, and the other is the ever-present anxiety over climate change. Whether all the answers to these problems lie in technological solutions remains an open question—probably not. But tech certainly will have a huge role to play.
The growing average age of the population is indisputable and will present difficult economic challenges. Because birth rates in the United States and most of the rest of the developed world have remained low for such a long time, this country and others have a dearth of young workers to replace the retiring baby-boom generation. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the proportion of the population of retirement age has expanded from 9.4 percent in 1960 to 17 percent in the 2020 census. Not all of those over 65 have left off working, but the bureau reports that the country now has under four people of working age available to support each person of retirement age….