How much of that risk an older shareholder base will allow boards and managements of listed entities to take is an important question. Overall, in a world where a higher proportion of the population wants to be retired and living (even if only in part) off the return on their savings, those returns are likely, all other things equal, to be lower.
Part and parcel of the same adjustment may be higher real wages for the smaller proportion of the population that is working. These changes, driven by demographics, may require some adjustment to our collective thinking about what is “normal”, not just for rates of return on assets but also for returns to labour.