Investing amid demographic decline

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-17/are-stocks-doomed-by-demographics

Quote:

He explains that the peak of the recent housing boom featured upper-middle-class families living in 4,000-square-foot McMansions. “About ten years from now,” he says, “what will they do? They’ll downsize to a 2,000-square-foot townhouse. What do they need all those bedrooms for? The kids are gone. They don’t visit anymore. Ten years after that, where are they? They’re in 200-square-foot nursing homes. Ten years later, where are they? They’re in a 20-square-foot grave plot. That’s the future of real estate. That’s why real estate has not bounced in Japan after 21 years. That’s why it won’t bounce here in the U.S. either. For every young couple that gets married, has babies, and buys a house, there’s an older couple moving into a nursing home or dying.”

Would the gentleman like Prozac gravy with that hunk of cold turkey?

Dent tracks a 46-year leading indicator that he says identifies a predictable peak in spending of the average household. He notes the Baby Boom birth index started to rise in 1937 and continued its ascent until 1961 before it fell. The result: “Add 46 to 1937, and you get a boom that starts in 1983. Add 46 to 61, and you get a boom that ends in 2007.”

And you know how marvelous things have been since 2007. Dent’s argumentative upshot: Painful, chronic deflation is here for quite some time. And there’s not much anyone can do about it. Lest you attempt to look for demographic silver linings, he urges, “Don’t hold your breath for the Echo Boomer generation.” That would be the group born between the early 1980s and mid-’90s.

Via Israeli Water Engineer.