Furthermore, if in the future the fertility rate remains at the current level (which is 1.29), then “the last baby will be born in about eight hundred years”.1 South Korea, Taiwan, China and Australia will follow a similar process in the absence of immigration, although the speed of their ageing process is divergent (Figure 1). 2.
We would be best served, in my judgment, by leaving issues such as option grant expense to regulatory bodies and the private sector. There is a legitimate question as to whether markets see through the current nonexpensing of options. If they do, moving to an explicit recognition of option expense in reported earnings will be a nonevent.