Thursday, October 11, 2007

Demographics and the Eurocurrency


Central Bankers are diversifying into the Euro and away from the dollar and so are fund managers and individuals. The dollar faces many challenges to be sure. But Europe has plenty of problems of its own and the long term problems are worse than those of the US. For example with all those government social programs who is going to pay the taxes to support the spending. BusinessWeek lays out the problem:

There are currently more elderly people than children living in the EU, as Europe's young population has decreased by 21 percent - or 23 million -- in 25 years, 10 percent of which in the last ten years alone.

Only 16.2 percent of today's EU population is less than 14 years old, while one sixth (16.6 percent) is 65 years or more. In addition one out of every 25 EU citizens is over 80 years old.

Mark Steyn lays it out more thoroughly in his book America Alone.

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