Will Global Aging Change the Pace of Technological Progress and Create a New Consumption Model?

This chapter discusses the mode and role of global aging in the future technological growth and model of consumption. Grinin et al. develop the idea that global aging has a dual and contradictory effect on technological progress: positive and negative. On the one hand, the need to improve the biological quality of life of the elderly, the struggle to increase life expectancy or against incurable diseases etc. spur science and technology to search for new breakthrough solutions. On the other hand, older people tend to be more conservative than the younger and middle-aged groups, leading to a slowdown in the rate of technological progress. In this chapter, Grinin et al. analyze these two trends and show how they and their relationship will affect the rate of technological progress in the twenty-first century. The other goal of this chapter is to show that one can assume that the current consumption pattern may also change under the influence of the global aging process. Thus, Grinin et al. suppose that global aging can change people’s needs that will lead to the transition to a new economic model, one that is not based on an endless increase of consumption.