It suggests a sharp bifurcation in demographic trends in developed and emerging economies. Among advanced countries, an ageing population results in a decline in the middle-aged share, from a peak today of almost 30% to around 25% by 2050. For developing economies the reverse is true, with a continuing rise in the fraction of middle-aged individuals from 20% today to around 25% by 2050. Cross-country correlations suggest a relationship between this prime-saving cohort and saving behaviour. Chart 22 suggest that every 1 percentage point rise in the middle-aged population share raises the national savings rate by around 1.75 percentage points. 5 Taken together with emerging population trends, this suggests some potentially important life-cycle pressures on the global pattern of savings in the period ahead. To bring these pressures to life, Chart 23 projects saving rates in a selection of countries out to 2050 based on population and GDP projections. This is plainly a gross over-simplification. These projections take no account of a whole host of other factors that may push in the other direction, including later retirement dates which may boost saving in countries with an ageing population, and falls in saving rates in emerging countries as the social safety net is widened. But based on demographic and convergence trends alone, saving rates in the BRICS, already high, are projected to continue their ascent.
The purpose of this is that those who have lent money will be forced to a greater extent than they are now to bear the costs of solving a crisis, in order to encourage them to show greater caution when making investment decisions. However, it is also important that the organisations mentioned counteract corruption and work actively to achieve an open democratic culture in the new countries taking part in the globalisation process. The recent globalisation debate has focused on a completely different issue, namely injustices in the distribution of income around the world and many believe that these injustices would be reduced if financial operators were prevented from rapidly moving money to where it provides the highest return. Many people feel that multinational corporations all too casually move their production to the countries that can offer the lowest production costs and this has also come up for debate in Sweden, particularly when Swedish regions have been hard hit by factory closures. The problems mainly concern the trade exchange between rich and poor countries and direct investment by rich countries in poor countries. Swedish history can also provide an illustration here. It has been calculated that the Swedish productive capital stock was 50 per cent higher during 1870 and 1914, through the import of foreign capital, than it would have been without this capital import. Sweden's industrialisation was thereby speeded up and welfare increased.