Speaker 1: Welcome to Copy Time, a podcast series on Markets and
Speaker 1: Economies from Devi S Group Research. I'm Tau. We chief economist.
Speaker 1: Welcoming you to our 133rd episode.
Speaker 1: Today, we will touch on demographics, a topic that has
Speaker 1: deep implications for economic growth, financial market outlook and social stability.
Speaker 1: Our guest is Jennifer Schubach, an expert on the field
Speaker 1: of political demography. She recently became the President and CEO
Speaker 1: of Population Reference Bureau. She also has affiliations with the
Speaker 1: Wilson Center and he Center for New Frontiers at the
Speaker 1: Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Speaker 1: Her latest book, 8 Billion and Counting how sex, death
Speaker 1: and migration shape our world. Jennifer. A warm welcome to
Speaker 1: Kovi
Speaker 2: Time. Thank you very much for having me
Speaker 1: and welcome back to Singapore. Yes,
Speaker 2: it is as busy as always. I think that's right.
Speaker 1: You were here, I believe about 1415 years ago. And
Speaker 1: what brings you to Singapore?
Speaker 2: I spoke yesterday at the Singapore Council on Women's Organization's
Speaker 2: first annual summit uh for Action on Gender equality, which
Speaker 2: is uh I argued that we need to look at
Speaker 2: our population issues through a gendered lens and we'll ask
Speaker 2: different questions than we might otherwise ask and get different answers.
Speaker 2: So I think it sheds a lot of light on
Speaker 2: what's happening with demographic dynamics, particularly in Asia.
Speaker 1: Fantastic. I don't think the intersection on gender and demographics
Speaker 1: are fully appreciated. So I'm glad you're taking a stab
Speaker 1: at that. Yeah. And
Speaker 2: you
Speaker 2: think it would be because, you know,
Speaker 2: biology and yet somehow it is not really on the
Speaker 2: radar of a policy maker.
Speaker 1: That's right. Great. So Jennifer, I want to take advantage
Speaker 1: of your experience and expertise on demographics as much as
Speaker 1: I can today. But I want to start with a
Speaker 1: couple of technical questions. So when I look at UN
Speaker 1: National Prospects Database, fantastic database. Great website. I use it
Speaker 1: all the time
Speaker 1: but it's not just one forecast for population, there are
Speaker 1: probability bands around population projections, then there are variants, low,
Speaker 1: medium high constant fertility, variant, instant replacement fertility. Can you
Speaker 1: break down these various measures of demographic projections for us? Sure.
Speaker 2: So you know, when you're thinking about how to approach
Speaker 2: the variant, you want to think about how are you
Speaker 2: going to use them? So
Speaker 2: there's different uses for different ones. I'm a huge fan
Speaker 2: of the constant fertility variant. It says if everything stays,
Speaker 2: stays the way that it is right now, what does
Speaker 2: the future look like? And this is what I love
Speaker 2: about demography. I'm sorry that you're an economist because you
Speaker 2: don't know what's happening tomorrow. But I do, right? Is it,
Speaker 2: it's a real privilege to be able to look out
Speaker 2: into the future, many years in the future and have
Speaker 2: a sense of what it will be because so many
Speaker 2: of the people of the future are already born.
Speaker 2: So the constant fertility variant is useful when we want
Speaker 2: to say what,
Speaker 2: you know, if everything stayed the same, how does the
Speaker 2: future look? So if you want to prepare for that
Speaker 2: type of future, then you can do so. And then
Speaker 2: as you start tweaking those underlying numbers, that's where you
Speaker 2: get this rainbow of projections. So you know, the UN
Speaker 2: actually has hundreds of projections just by tweaking those underlying variants.
Speaker 2: Most people use the medium
Speaker 2: and it is the one that the UN would say
Speaker 2: is the most likely to happen. It is made with
Speaker 2: a mathematical model and it's based on uh the past.
Speaker 2: So how do we use the past to inform the future?
Speaker 2: It's not my favorite though because my background is actually
Speaker 2: politics and political science and I'm not sure that that not,
Speaker 2: you know, failing to contextualize an economic, political and social
Speaker 2: variables is really the way to think about the future.
Speaker 1: I think I want to call this podcast, contextualizing demography.
Speaker 1: And I think you want to revisit this issue over
Speaker 1: and over again. I think I also am persuaded by
Speaker 1: the constant fertility matter and I really found resonance in
Speaker 1: it when I saw your TED talk where you had
Speaker 1: these projections that, you know, this country's population go down
Speaker 1: by 40% by the end of the century. If we
Speaker 1: go with the constant
Speaker 1: variant, uh constant fertility variant, and then to your point,
Speaker 1: you can start preparing or if you don't like that outcome,
Speaker 1: maybe you can change.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, it's really important if you
Speaker 2: are someone who actually uses these projections in your work
Speaker 2: to make a difference as you know, economists might do
Speaker 2: to understand what, how those assumptions are tweaked for the future.
Speaker 2: And there have been some things that, that I would
Speaker 2: really disagree with. So if we look, for example, at
Speaker 2: the difference between the medium and the constant fertility for
Speaker 2: countries like Nigeria or Tanzania just over the next uh
Speaker 2: what 16 years, just out to 2040
Speaker 2: it makes a dramatic difference in the total number of people.
Speaker 2: I think it's something like um the constant fertility variant
Speaker 2: versus the medium for Nigeria, I think is a child
Speaker 2: and a half different. That would be. Now think about
Speaker 2: Singapore's total fertility rate is less than one child. So
Speaker 2: where is, is a huge difference? And so there are
Speaker 2: these assumptions that you can tweak that say, do you
Speaker 2: expect fertility rates to go up where they are currently low?
Speaker 2: And historically, the UN has put that in there? And
Speaker 2: do you expect them to come down where they're high?
Speaker 1: Correct?
Speaker 1: OK. If I were to travel back in time to
Speaker 1: your last visit to Singapore. So 2010, 2011 and we
Speaker 1: opened up un prospect probably it was not as elegant
Speaker 1: a website then. It, it
Speaker 2: was such easier to use though.
Speaker 1: And, uh, and, and we looked at the forecast sitting
Speaker 1: at 2011 and we looked at the forecast for 2024.
Speaker 1: How spot on with those forecasts would have been?
Speaker 2: What I remember the most was how optimistic
Speaker 2: they were. So they were optimistic in two ways. Um
Speaker 2: I've always been a Japan watcher and I remember noticing
Speaker 2: how uh the expectation was that Japan's total fertility rate
Speaker 2: would rise in the future.
Speaker 2: Well, that certainly has not happened. In fact, you know,
Speaker 2: most of these rates have gone lower and I think
Speaker 2: there was a sense that surely it can't stay this
Speaker 2: low for this long. So there, you know, they thought
Speaker 2: it would go up and then there was also an
Speaker 2: expectation that it would come down faster, basically in a
Speaker 2: handful of Sub Saharan African countries where it's still high
Speaker 2: because it really fell fast in most parts of the world.
Speaker 2: Um
Speaker 2: But there have been a handful of countries where it
Speaker 2: has remained high. Some demographers call it a fertility stall.
Speaker 2: I mean that in and of itself shows that there's
Speaker 2: a bias towards assuming a rapid decline. Um but they
Speaker 2: were also overly optimistic about how quickly those rates would
Speaker 2: fall
Speaker 1: so the 8 billion mark that is looming would have
Speaker 1: been at a different point in time.
Speaker 2: It
Speaker 2: wasn't really because actually they kind of canceled each other out. So,
Speaker 2: you know, we knew it was 12 to 13 years
Speaker 2: roughly in there, which is, you know, pretty close.
Speaker 1: I use a lot of these data for my work
Speaker 1: here at D BS. And as you can imagine, as
Speaker 1: a aging society in Singapore, this issue is very close
Speaker 1: to our heart. Um One question that I sometimes confront
Speaker 1: is the forecast on India versus Japan, China versus us.
Speaker 1: Are they all comparable? Are all countries producing decently comparable
Speaker 1: data?
Speaker 2: Well,
Speaker 2: no, not, not necessarily. Um And there are multiple groups
Speaker 2: who actually put out population projection. So Population Reference Bureau
Speaker 2: does one as well. We have our world population data
Speaker 2: sheet which we put out for about 60 years, comes
Speaker 2: out um in September most years and uh our demographers
Speaker 2: do their own sorts of projections. And
Speaker 2: so there are a lot of sources of data if
Speaker 2: you were to open up, for example, um the methodology
Speaker 2: for Afghanistan. So like how does the UN actually know
Speaker 2: what's happening in Afghanistan? We know that this is a,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot happening in this country. So
Speaker 2: how are you supposed to figure out where the population is?
Speaker 2: You'd have two paragraphs of them fig of pulling together
Speaker 2: data sources, um USA ID funds a series of demographic
Speaker 2: and health surveys,
Speaker 2: the DH S that's a really solid source for um
Speaker 2: inputs into these projections. Um But sometimes there's also a
Speaker 2: little bit of picking up the phone and calling other
Speaker 2: demographers and, and experts in these countries and these regions
Speaker 2: to say, here's what the numbers say. What do you
Speaker 2: think about these? So there's a bit of a human
Speaker 2: touch in there outside of that medium variant that I really,
Speaker 2: I think is actually very useful.
Speaker 2: But just to so, so look
Speaker 2: the sources will be somewhat different,
Speaker 2: but they're going through the same filter.
Speaker 2: So in my mind, I'm comfortable enough saying that they're
Speaker 2: comparable and that it's the filter part that matters.
Speaker 1: Are there ways of sort of triangulating the data? So
Speaker 1: you bring me demographic data, I bring you tax collection
Speaker 1: data and we can see that if a country's projection
Speaker 1: is huge pickup and the labor force in the country
Speaker 1: saying there's lots of people working, we should be seeing
Speaker 1: that in other
Speaker 2: and then some of that happens as well and they
Speaker 2: could pull from all kinds of different record keeping.
Speaker 2: Um You know, the hardest part is the migration piece
Speaker 2: because by definition, these people are on the move. So
Speaker 2: there's a lot of guessing that goes into the migration
Speaker 2: part as well.
Speaker 1: Jennifer, I was in Cambodia recently and they sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, talk about the killing fields in the seventies
Speaker 1: and how life expectancy collapsed there. I think to like
Speaker 1: 23 or 24 there. It's come back amazingly well over
Speaker 1: the last 40 years. So that kind of reflects the
Speaker 1: resiliency of society that
Speaker 1: a demographic shock need not be fatal. And there are
Speaker 1: ways to rejuvenate. But also it sort of brings me
Speaker 1: to this question that, you know, what are the shocks
Speaker 1: that alter demographic trends? Did the pandemic change demographic in
Speaker 1: the world?
Speaker 2: Not
Speaker 2: really. So obviously, for the people who died in their families,
Speaker 2: it was very much a shock. But when we're talking
Speaker 2: about in these aggregate numbers, it didn't. Um In fact,
Speaker 2: I think already that's kind of worked its way out
Speaker 2: of the data
Speaker 2: in some part. It's because many of the deaths were
Speaker 2: to people who were already finished with their reproductive years.
Speaker 2: Um But even for fertility rates, they basically went to
Speaker 2: where they were before. And in the U SI, I've
Speaker 2: always talked about it as it just put the, it
Speaker 2: pushed on the gas pedal directions we were already headed.
Speaker 2: So maybe you
Speaker 2: a little bit of an acceleration, you know, life expectance
Speaker 2: in the US was already on the decline, which is insane.
Speaker 2: By the way, it should not
Speaker 1: for a wealthy industrial society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even generally like, you know, unless absent a giant war,
Speaker 2: it is absolutely insane that it would be going down.
Speaker 2: And so it just pushed on the gas pedal a
Speaker 2: little bit. Fertility trends already headed down. Maybe you push
Speaker 2: on the gas pedal a little bit. And most demographers
Speaker 2: would say that people who were going to have babies,
Speaker 2: they might have delayed a little bit and then picked
Speaker 2: right back up.
Speaker 1: What about the pandemic bump? People were all staying at
Speaker 1: home and not working, didn't they have a lot of babies? No,
Speaker 2: not this time. Yeah. And like some of the data
Speaker 2: we've seen about even what power outages in the past
Speaker 2: and then you can kind of trace up now.
Speaker 1: Fascinating. So it seems to me that we have pretty
Speaker 1: powerful trends in motion and we have seen policy experiments
Speaker 1: here and there around the world. And so far,
Speaker 1: the power of the trend seems to be overwhelming to
Speaker 1: a large extent. Um I'm gonna come back to that
Speaker 1: uh because I want to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the issue related to Scandinavia and so on, but just
Speaker 1: drivers of fertility. Uh I know it's a big subject but,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you get lots of questions on that.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what drives fertility rates.
Speaker 2: It is a lot of things which actually is what
Speaker 2: frustrates policymakers. And I'm sympathetic to that because as an academic,
Speaker 2: you know, the the best study is when you can say,
Speaker 2: which is the mo what are the most powerful explanatory
Speaker 2: variables here? And then if you're a policymaker, you can
Speaker 2: take that research and you say, well, let's tweak, let's
Speaker 2: put a policy in place to address this and voila
Speaker 2: problem solved, but that's not really how these decisions are made.
Speaker 2: And I think anyone who has considered having Children
Speaker 2: knows exactly what we mean. When we say that it's complicated.
Speaker 2: It's never just about the money or the ti, you know, timing.
Speaker 2: It's so many things. But if you think about fertility
Speaker 2: rates as a big old pot of soup, there are
Speaker 2: a few different ingredients that go in and that are
Speaker 2: pretty standard. So modernization matters and modernization can be a
Speaker 2: whole host of variables like um education rates for women.
Speaker 2: So if you're talking about a country where fertility rates
Speaker 2: are very high, let's say 56 Children per woman.
Speaker 2: And you bring in um educational system where women especially
Speaker 2: make it to secondary school. You're gonna see those rates
Speaker 2: fall also in modernization, incomes are rising. So opportunity cost
Speaker 2: goes up, uh more opportunities to earn income outside the home.
Speaker 2: You know, all of that kind of comes in together
Speaker 2: there more robust health systems, access to family planning. And
Speaker 2: so that is one driver.
Speaker 2: You also have government policy which and it's hard to
Speaker 2: analytically separate some of these because the government policy will
Speaker 2: often be let's put in schools or put in health clinics.
Speaker 2: But I with modernization, I like to think of it
Speaker 2: as processes that are in motion that that the government
Speaker 2: may or may not have put in motion itself. Um
Speaker 2: But government policy can change the trajectory of trends as
Speaker 2: we know, think about China and many India, many other places.
Speaker 2: And then there's the family planning piece and it really is,
Speaker 2: it's often left out of discussions which I find puzzling
Speaker 2: but just the technology of being able to decide how
Speaker 2: many Children to have and when is really powerful.
Speaker 1: I bring this up with some degree of trepidation and
Speaker 1: hesitation because this is a podcast on numbers and, and
Speaker 1: trends and policy. But let me go there anyway, uh
Speaker 1: last week, there was an article came from Apple News.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the source, but it was that there
Speaker 1: is also something beyond all these macroeconomic societal factors. There
Speaker 1: is this question of purpose that
Speaker 1: there is a generational shift on sense of purpose and
Speaker 1: people feel that between climate change and geopolitics, they're not
Speaker 1: hopeful about the future and maybe that plays a role.
Speaker 1: It's hard to put a finger on it. But what's
Speaker 1: your thought on that? I think?
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yes. And you know, if I'm trying to keep
Speaker 2: it simple, I kind of stick it under the modernization umbrella,
Speaker 2: but it is different.
Speaker 2: And it's funny because, you know, now that I'm the
Speaker 2: CEO of PR B, the first time I ever learned
Speaker 2: about the Population Reference Bureau was to attend, I mean,
Speaker 2: this is well over 20 years ago, I guess, but
Speaker 2: it was to attend a seminar that was trying to
Speaker 2: explain why fertility rates were so low in eastern Europe
Speaker 2: and I'll never forget it. Uh because they, they, they
Speaker 2: talked about all these same kind of variables we mentioned
Speaker 2: and they said really, there's just no people feel so
Speaker 2: dismal about the future
Speaker 2: and we do see echoes of that today. Um especially,
Speaker 2: you know, anecdotally, you speak to a young person, they
Speaker 2: talk about that all the time. Um
Speaker 2: There, that is some of it. But as far as
Speaker 2: how do we know for sure if that will shape
Speaker 2: fertility behavior? We don't know yet. And that's because these
Speaker 2: young people have not completed their fertility. And so there
Speaker 2: are some papers that I've seen that say, yeah, they
Speaker 2: may feel this way. But we all know you, you
Speaker 2: have a cer certain set of way. You think the
Speaker 2: world works and you're 20 you're 25
Speaker 2: and then you think a lot differently about the world later.
Speaker 2: So we will not know we have to do this
Speaker 2: again in 10 years to say, did it actually drive
Speaker 2: people's fertility behavior lower?
Speaker 1: It
Speaker 1: makes me a little sad because I'd like to think
Speaker 1: that optimism should be at the younger age spectrum and
Speaker 1: the midlife crisis and everything should be later. But it's
Speaker 1: like we're hoping it's almost the opposite. Now, you're starting
Speaker 1: out kind of jaded about the future. And then hopefully,
Speaker 1: as you make money, as you get gainful employment, you
Speaker 1: get more purpose.
Speaker 2: Well, and I
Speaker 2: think we're caught in this, this echo chamber because think
Speaker 2: about the type of news that comes in our phones.
Speaker 2: It's all that and it's right there. It's in our
Speaker 2: faces all day long. And for young people, that's all
Speaker 2: they're surrounded by. Whereas we didn't grow up with that
Speaker 2: type of flow of information.
Speaker 2: And there are, I, I was speaking to a group
Speaker 2: of young people, um, actually young people in Asia the
Speaker 2: other night, uh, in the US. And I, I said
Speaker 2: to them, you know, there are places where you can
Speaker 2: read good news. Um, Angus Hervey, who is out of Australia,
Speaker 2: I think he was at uh TED the same time
Speaker 2: I was and he has his whole shtick is, here's
Speaker 2: the good news and it's real news. It's evidence based
Speaker 2: and it's actually showing what has happened. Um Hannah Ritchie
Speaker 2: was also at, at TED the same year as I
Speaker 2: was and she, she talks about environment
Speaker 2: and she had a book out. Um, what year earlier
Speaker 2: this year, I think as well. And she says these
Speaker 2: are all the things that have gotten better, but that
Speaker 2: is like a, a grain of sand on a beach.
Speaker 1: Come back to the issue of modernization. The theory has
Speaker 1: been that when you look at a country like Sweden
Speaker 1: or Norway, once you become very wealthy, then people start
Speaker 1: behaving a little differently because there are so many safes
Speaker 1: in place and they then do have babies. I would
Speaker 1: have thought some of that would play out in Japan.
Speaker 1: That hasn't happened.
Speaker 1: So, not quite a convincing argument.
Speaker 2: Well, I think we moved the bar on ourselves. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, when I feel very fortunate, I think mine,
Speaker 2: mine was like the last cohort of people who could
Speaker 2: basically buy houses in our early twenties before things started
Speaker 2: to get out of control. Um,
Speaker 2: but even the expectations that younger people have today for
Speaker 2: what they wanna achieve before they have Children, it has
Speaker 2: really moved up, up, up. Um And I think, I mean,
Speaker 2: we could go down a rabbit hole about a technology.
Speaker 2: I do keep coming back to, I remember um when
Speaker 2: my kids were very young was when Instagram was really
Speaker 2: starting and the only messages you'd get about parenting basically
Speaker 2: were how hard it was
Speaker 2: or the perfect mom who is throwing the perfect party
Speaker 2: that probably costs $500. Well, neither of those things is
Speaker 2: very attractive when you're thinking about having Children. Uh You're
Speaker 2: thinking just really about how incredibly expensive it is. And
Speaker 2: so a lot of the people I was speaking with
Speaker 2: actually yesterday at this summit were saying how the competition
Speaker 2: for like who can, who can just be better, more educated,
Speaker 2: have a higher income. It's really spiraled up and this
Speaker 2: puts a downward pressure on fertility
Speaker 2: itself,
Speaker 1: correct? OK. This is a medical science question. I really
Speaker 1: don't know if there's an answer to this description, but
Speaker 1: just from a women's health perspective. Are women today asked
Speaker 1: for a child? I know it's complicated because there's a
Speaker 1: choice issue there. But just from a biological perspective, well,
Speaker 2: there
Speaker 2: waiting later. So, and that is just very simple stats,
Speaker 2: you know, people are marrying later and then they're waiting
Speaker 2: later to have their first child. And when you know,
Speaker 2: sitting in Asia where mo you know, most marriages, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: most Children are born within a marriage.
Speaker 2: That means that marriage becomes an incredibly important first step
Speaker 2: before you have Children. So if people are waiting later
Speaker 2: to get married, then they are starting their families later.
Speaker 2: And so we do see um a lot more women
Speaker 2: of older ages seeking assisted reproductive technology. And those, those,
Speaker 2: you know, we see that around
Speaker 2: world, I mean, in the US, for example, the only
Speaker 2: age group, I think that was seeing an increase in
Speaker 2: births was 40 to 45. But that's because they were
Speaker 2: waiting
Speaker 2: later.
Speaker 1: So it's not health but health, technology and choice.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think so. Now this is, you know, there
Speaker 2: are other people who have said that it's infertility.
Speaker 2: I don't buy it because if you study data just
Speaker 2: on preferences, you see that preferences
Speaker 1: shifted, correct. And that's, that's probably the most powerful one.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Japan a little bit. Japan has
Speaker 1: had a demographic time bomb ticking away for the last
Speaker 1: several decades. And we see stories of, you know, villages
Speaker 1: getting depopulated, the country being forced to embrace certain aspects
Speaker 1: of immigration that Japan was not really open to in
Speaker 1: the past.
Speaker 1: This is the bad stuff. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: when I look at Japan's economic performance over the last
Speaker 1: 2030 years, while we say there has been a lost decade,
Speaker 1: but because they have had basically zero or negative population
Speaker 1: growth rate, their per capita income has gone up. So
Speaker 1: the Japanese who are around are significantly more prosperous today
Speaker 1: than they were. While just looking at the demographic story,
Speaker 1: it looks like a bad story. So how do we
Speaker 1: net this out? I think
Speaker 2: we had nothing but wild guesses about what aging would
Speaker 2: look like and its effects on the economy. Now,
Speaker 2: other people would say they're not wild guesses, they're based
Speaker 2: in all these economic theories about productivity and labor and
Speaker 2: all of that. But we didn't know because we've never
Speaker 2: in human history had this type of demographic shift. So
Speaker 2: we took our logic from the past, which by the way,
Speaker 2: this logic was made
Speaker 2: at a time when population growth seemed like it would
Speaker 2: be infinite. So all of our economic theories, all of
Speaker 2: our cases have to do with that. And when we
Speaker 2: kind of say, well, it must be different in the future.
Speaker 2: I think we also have applied what we know about
Speaker 2: individual aging to populations that you lose your capacity to
Speaker 2: be innovative. You have cognitive decline you'll be less of
Speaker 2: a risk taker, you're tired and not productive. And we
Speaker 2: put all of that on what population aging would look
Speaker 2: like and what it would do to the economy.
Speaker 2: And so now we were surprised that that didn't necessarily happen.
Speaker 2: I think in Japan's case, they were great there. If
Speaker 2: anybody was going to go first, I'm glad they went
Speaker 2: first
Speaker 2: because they do show what's possible. And I really, if,
Speaker 2: if I really mean that I'm glad that they went
Speaker 2: first because imagine a, a country, I'm not gonna name
Speaker 2: any other country names here. But imagine a country where
Speaker 2: technology was not so robust or the population wasn't so
Speaker 2: educated or even consumption patterns or views on older people,
Speaker 2: all of these things together made it a great case
Speaker 2: to say, look what's possible. I think it, I I
Speaker 2: saw some statistic that something like half of Japanese firms
Speaker 2: still use um
Speaker 2: workers who are over the age of 70. So these
Speaker 2: are things that I don't think we really thoroughly accounted
Speaker 2: for when we were making our predictions of the future.
Speaker 2: We
Speaker 1: just assume over 65 retired
Speaker 2: productivity. That's why I would never use dependency ratio. I,
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess when I first started, I used
Speaker 2: it and I quickly threw it out and said, I
Speaker 2: will never use this as a measure because you can't
Speaker 2: compare Gree
Speaker 2: with Japan in terms of dependency ratio. It's not that
Speaker 2: there's a magical number, you become a
Speaker 2: dependent.
Speaker 1: Right. There's like 56 years difference in the official retirement age.
Speaker 1: You got more de facto. Yes.
Speaker 2: And
Speaker 2: I don't, yeah, I don't even use official retirement age either.
Speaker 2: I think about what's the effective retirement age,
Speaker 1: but one bottom line would be that you should be
Speaker 1: rich before you get old.
Speaker 1: From a
Speaker 2: perspective. I will say we don't know what is the
Speaker 2: should part. So, so here's how I think about population aging,
Speaker 2: they're always winners and losers. It, the winners and losers
Speaker 2: will be different in different settings. Um Let's say, for example,
Speaker 2: if you are a um a poor country and there's
Speaker 2: population aging, the losers will be the families and the
Speaker 2: older people themselves um who really might not have the
Speaker 2: resources to go around.
Speaker 2: Is it going to bankrupt the government budget? Maybe not,
Speaker 2: maybe they are the winners because they never put in
Speaker 2: place those systems in the first place versus maybe a
Speaker 2: European style welfare State where there are all these extensive
Speaker 2: promises to the population. Well, the winners and losers might
Speaker 2: look different there. So it's, it's really all about those
Speaker 2: trade offs.
Speaker 1: All right. That's, that's fantastic. And I'm glad you brought
Speaker 1: that up. Um It's hard to talk about demographic trends
Speaker 1: without one corollary of demographic trend, which is migration
Speaker 1: uh for opportunities for uh you know, push factors, you know,
Speaker 1: people move around. So when you think about demographics in
Speaker 1: dealing with demographic, uh you know, trans aging, for example,
Speaker 1: how do you contextualize migration
Speaker 2: most of the time when I get questions from, you know,
Speaker 2: there's always a question from the audience on migration and
Speaker 2: there's always an assumption that the flows of the future
Speaker 2: will be huge. I think everywhere I go, it is
Speaker 2: look what's to come. When several years ago, when people
Speaker 2: started paying more and more attention to climate change, look
Speaker 2: how many people will be displaced, the flows will be huge.
Speaker 2: I don't think that at all
Speaker 2: doesn't mean people won't need to migrate or won't want
Speaker 2: to migrate. But I don't think that they will be
Speaker 2: able to migrate. I don't see any if I do
Speaker 2: a temperature check around the world. There's nothing that tells
Speaker 2: me here they come.
Speaker 2: Um And in fact, speaking of winners and losers, people
Speaker 2: who will be displaced and maybe need to move, they
Speaker 2: will be the losers. In this case, I see nothing
Speaker 2: but borders and actually, as I think, you know, put
Speaker 2: it in conversation with low fertility. So these low fertility,
Speaker 2: high migration societies, there's a lot of discussion and conflict
Speaker 2: about the right, the, you know, the right mix of migrants.
Speaker 2: Um
Speaker 2: And I know that in, in Asia, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of discussion particularly in Korea and Japan about what role
Speaker 2: will migration play in the future in compensating for those
Speaker 2: labor force losses. And most of the time I hear
Speaker 2: people talk about Europe and say, I'm not really sure
Speaker 2: we actually want to go in that direction. Is there
Speaker 2: another way to do it? Um I think most people
Speaker 2: do not realize that 96% of the world's population still
Speaker 2: lives in the country in which they were born.
Speaker 2: And I think the reason that it gets so wrong
Speaker 2: in the popular media is that the elite in the world,
Speaker 2: they have moved you. We're, we're in Singapore right now.
Speaker 2: This is a group of people whose bias would be
Speaker 2: thinking everybody moves. I've given a talk in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2: I always ask this question. I mean, spoiler alert. If I,
Speaker 2: if I come give a talk for anybody who's listening,
Speaker 2: I'll say pop quiz, what proportion of the world's population
Speaker 2: lives out the side of the country in which they're
Speaker 2: born and in Silicon Valley they're like 50%.
Speaker 2: And I said, yeah, that's because you all moved, you know,
Speaker 2: but it's way lower. So it's been, you know, two
Speaker 2: or 3% for, for decades. I, I think there will
Speaker 2: be reasons for people to move but labor does not
Speaker 2: flow like capital, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Of
Speaker 1: course. Uh I also think that some of the migration
Speaker 1: of people might be supplanted by migration of robots going forward.
Speaker 1: I had this discussion, Jennifer a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: I was at us C and we were talking about
Speaker 1: economic future of the world, but
Speaker 1: in the context of China we talked about aging and
Speaker 1: what that means for China. And there were a couple
Speaker 1: of Chinese nationals in the audience and they came to
Speaker 1: talk to me after and they said you do want
Speaker 1: to talk about China in the context of automation and
Speaker 1: robot organization because we are very much cognizant of the
Speaker 1: fact that our labor force is not what it used
Speaker 1: to be and we will embrace automation as enthusiastically more
Speaker 1: than anybody
Speaker 1: else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe that to be the case. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think, I mean, I'd be curious, I'm gonna kind
Speaker 2: of throw this back to you a little bit when
Speaker 2: I think about automation
Speaker 2: and, and aging, I tend to think that if it
Speaker 2: displaces some high skilled workers, that's probably good actually, since
Speaker 2: there'll be fewer in the future
Speaker 2: where I get uncomfortable. If it displaces low skilled workers
Speaker 2: in low income contexts, then we are in a different space,
Speaker 1: right? What I would like to hope for is that
Speaker 1: a highly automated future actually increases the work potential of
Speaker 1: the low or the high skilled people that they can
Speaker 1: harness those robots and do more stuff as opposed to
Speaker 1: being fully replaced by the robots that a future should
Speaker 1: be
Speaker 1: characterized by even more capabilities and more options for us
Speaker 1: to do things. Not like, you know, just that one
Speaker 1: thing that was done by a human being would be
Speaker 1: done by a robot. Why can we have a multiplicity
Speaker 1: around that, but that might be techno optimistic.
Speaker 2: But I'm the same way too and I mostly am optimistic.
Speaker 2: And when I look at demographic trends, I, my goodness,
Speaker 2: look at life expectancy. We've added a whole another life
Speaker 2: to people
Speaker 2: and, you know, if it is the case that it
Speaker 2: gives us a better well being in the future, that's
Speaker 2: wonderful and kind of marry this with what we know
Speaker 2: about younger generations today and their feelings about work. They
Speaker 2: really prioritize well being. Uh so I'm not sure they're
Speaker 2: willing to work the same number of hours. So perhaps
Speaker 2: it
Speaker 2: a perfect marriage,
Speaker 1: correct. So what is your sense of your conversations with
Speaker 1: policymakers around the world? Like government of Singapore or government
Speaker 1: of the US or elsewhere? How are governments dealing with
Speaker 1: these extremely powerful and most overwhelming shifts in demographic trends?
Speaker 2: No matter where I am, there's one important thing in common.
Speaker 2: They just wanna put the genie back in the bottle
Speaker 2: and that means how do we get more babies now?
Speaker 2: Even Singapore, which I am a huge admirer of. Uh
Speaker 2: and I think if you like incredibly innovative again, if
Speaker 2: anybody has to go through these types of things first,
Speaker 2: great for Singapore to do it because we can see
Speaker 2: what will happen.
Speaker 2: But the general conversation everywhere is tell us what's the secret,
Speaker 2: what's the secret to more babies? There is no secret.
Speaker 2: And if I could have anyone, you know, if we
Speaker 2: could change anything. It would be, accept this and move
Speaker 2: towards resilience, the first country that does that and starts
Speaker 2: planning for a resilient society. Speaking of winners and losers,
Speaker 2: I mean, that, that put all your eggs in that basket.
Speaker 2: That's the place to follow. So I keep looking for
Speaker 2: signs that someone gets it
Speaker 2: and they've moved past it and they're just thinking about,
Speaker 2: you know, retirement work, health and all of those things,
Speaker 2: Singapore possibly comes the closest to that. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of discussion about health span, uh health span versus um
Speaker 2: lifespan about wealth span as well. And, and so I,
Speaker 2: I see little bits of murmurings there. Uh But we're,
Speaker 2: I think we're already behind.
Speaker 1: I became a citizen of Singapore earlier this year and
Speaker 1: immediately I was given access to certain facilities like SG
Speaker 1: health where the idea is that the health span issue
Speaker 1: that having a single general practitioner attached to you who
Speaker 1: has your records or refusing to go to a different doctor,
Speaker 1: the records digitally go to the other doctor and there's
Speaker 1: a continuous case record and the focus is on preventative
Speaker 1: care as opposed to spending a lot of money on hospitalization.
Speaker 1: So I think that's one sensible approach to dealing with
Speaker 1: a population that will be increasingly older going
Speaker 1: forward.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And I really do think that, you know, Singapore
Speaker 2: is pretty much the one place that is, and it
Speaker 2: helps it small because you can have lots of experiments here, small,
Speaker 2: well educated and innovative.
Speaker 2: So, you know, if you're going to have resilience, that's perfect.
Speaker 1: Let's jump outside of Singapore a little bit and go
Speaker 1: to the rest of Southeast Asia. What's your sense? I mean,
Speaker 1: the one story that we always talk about in this
Speaker 1: region is Thailand, which is not a high income economy
Speaker 1: but displaying
Speaker 1: advanced economy type demographic dynamic.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I know it's really, I'm also curious about Thailand. I, what?
Speaker 2: So again, my whole career I've heard and it was
Speaker 2: always spoken about China old before, rich, old, before rich.
Speaker 2: And so I've always tried to think why, what is,
Speaker 2: what does that actually matter? Is it
Speaker 2: about household savings and income security in old age? Well,
Speaker 2: how could we offset that if there's a really strong,
Speaker 2: you know, family support there. Is it about the types
Speaker 2: of jobs that people will have? So I don't know
Speaker 2: if I think Thailand, I think the total fertility rate
Speaker 2: there is like Singapore, one child per woman. I don't
Speaker 2: know if I buy that. All of these countries that
Speaker 2: are seeing these demographic trends before they're rich are doomed.
Speaker 2: What do you think I'm missing?
Speaker 1: I think you make a very good point. I think
Speaker 1: the view is from a very traditional growth model. You
Speaker 1: need a certain amount of money and a certain amount
Speaker 1: of people to get a certain amount of growth, assuming
Speaker 1: productivity is sort of constant around that if you have
Speaker 1: less number of people, you'll get less growth, less growth
Speaker 1: is like them because disaster economies can think of and therefore,
Speaker 1: you know, you are doomed. And so do you need
Speaker 1: immigration or do you need to have ways to encourage
Speaker 1: women to have more babies? That sort of stuff?
Speaker 1: But I think that given your train of thought, I'm
Speaker 1: sort of persuaded by the point that you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: think about pushing back against a very overwhelming dynamic. It's
Speaker 1: a bit like climate change and we can take a
Speaker 1: lot of mitigating measures. But we basically have to deal
Speaker 1: with the world that will be warmer tomorrow than it
Speaker 1: is today and today is already warmer than yesterday. Similarly,
Speaker 1: with aging, I think that again, I think you made
Speaker 1: a very good point with respect to Japan.
Speaker 1: We probably were optimistic about Japan's demographic trend 20 years
Speaker 1: ago than what has turned out to be and might
Speaker 1: as well then have a very conservative approach instead of
Speaker 1: being overly optimistic about it. So plan with the view
Speaker 1: that fertile der don't change and then see what are
Speaker 1: the opportunities around that?
Speaker 2: I think that climate, I use the climate change uh
Speaker 2: all the time to say, you know, you sure let's
Speaker 2: try to stop the warming of the world, but you're
Speaker 2: not just going to sit there on your front porch
Speaker 2: with the water lapping around your ankles and think, well,
Speaker 2: how do we stop the world from warming, you're gonna
Speaker 2: try to put your house up on stilts. And so
Speaker 2: this adaptation and resilience is exactly um how we need.
Speaker 2: And now can I ask you about growth though? I
Speaker 2: uh so
Speaker 2: I come at this from an environmental studies perspective actually,
Speaker 2: um
Speaker 2: And
Speaker 2: when I look at the, we've already got 50 shrinking countries,
Speaker 2: I think. So this, this is already happening. We're already there.
Speaker 2: And yet I don't see anything changing in the conversation
Speaker 2: about a bias towards growth, a fetish of growth actually,
Speaker 2: what would it take or is it impossible for us
Speaker 2: to move away from thinking that the ultimate marker of
Speaker 2: success is positive growth. Even as a country's population is shrinking,
Speaker 1: it's hard, it's easy to just stay fixated on national
Speaker 1: accounts based numbers, you know, which is not a very
Speaker 1: old construct basically began after the second world war when
Speaker 1: we had the whole war economy input output and national
Speaker 1: accounts made sense this much capital, this much labor. This
Speaker 1: is the amount of value that we are creating. We
Speaker 1: haven't gotten out of it. We as economists are culpable
Speaker 1: of not being able to
Speaker 1: inform the world that there are better ways of looking
Speaker 1: at prosperity, social welfare and well being. So for me,
Speaker 1: for example, Singapore's biggest achievement is not a very high
Speaker 1: per capita income, but the fact that it has one
Speaker 1: of the highest life expectancies in the world that its
Speaker 1: population has some of the highest education attainments in the world.
Speaker 1: So I would love for us to look at it
Speaker 1: from a multi dimensional perspective. But I think policymakers find
Speaker 1: it easier to deal with a dollar amount and that
Speaker 1: being a proxy for success achievement,
Speaker 1: very hard to get out of that. And uh so
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say that there is some bright
Speaker 1: new shining field of economics that's going to change the
Speaker 1: way we look at it. Nobel Laureate, Aaren and Joe
Speaker 1: Stiglitz a few years ago, maybe about 1012 years ago,
Speaker 1: wanted to sort of, you know, break forth alternative measures
Speaker 1: of GDP different ways of looking at it. It was
Speaker 1: an interesting thought experiment didn't really go anywhere. I think
Speaker 1: for the remainder of our mutual professional careers, we'll have
Speaker 1: to deal with a point that
Speaker 1: if population shrinks growth goes down and that's the worst
Speaker 1: of all, the worst of
Speaker 2: all. And it's a shame, I really do think, yeah, maybe,
Speaker 2: maybe in the future, but I do find the same
Speaker 2: thing when I talk to people in the private sector
Speaker 2: about what does it look like to scale down
Speaker 2: and the, the, the, the eyes just bug out and you,
Speaker 2: you know, you'd be at the airport and what is
Speaker 2: on the screen behind you, what is consumer spending look like?
Speaker 2: And it's just all of these markers that we expect.
Speaker 2: And I, I do find that it connects actually with
Speaker 2: our views on the environment because again, if you're measuring
Speaker 2: everything with spending
Speaker 2: uh or with growth, then that really conflicts with what
Speaker 2: we're trying to do environmentally as well.
Speaker 1: How
Speaker 1: do you reduce emission when you want to actually burn
Speaker 1: more electricity to run the genii models that we want
Speaker 1: to use
Speaker 1: now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit easier with the
Speaker 2: environment actually than with aging because you say, well, there's
Speaker 2: a huge, uh there's a lot of money to be made.
Speaker 2: We make these shifts towards greater things.
Speaker 1: So that's one thing that again is close to my
Speaker 1: heart because as a bank, we think about what are
Speaker 1: the financial opportunities around an increasingly silver population and what
Speaker 1: kind of financial engineering options you can give them so
Speaker 1: that whatever money they have, it can go longer than
Speaker 1: what we have thought was necessary even 1015 years ago.
Speaker 1: So that is something that I think banks, insurance companies,
Speaker 1: pension funds in Singapore in the US in Europe will
Speaker 1: keep on doing, going forward because
Speaker 1: going back to my immediate response to you, which is
Speaker 1: that the growth fetish is not going to go away.
Speaker 1: So that's, it's what it is. Um I am sure
Speaker 1: Jennifer that you get asked about China and its doomsday
Speaker 1: scenarios are on aging all the time. How do you
Speaker 1: respond to those people who think that China is destined
Speaker 1: for really bad things because it's aging so rapidly.
Speaker 2: Well, one thing I say is that China is not
Speaker 2: as surprised as you might think China is. So if you,
Speaker 2: you can read documents from 40 years ago where
Speaker 2: those in charge said, all right, if we put in
Speaker 2: place these policies that encourage or more than encourage lower
Speaker 2: births in 40 years time, we will be an aging society.
Speaker 2: So they knew that would happen. I think the surprise
Speaker 2: part is they thought they could reverse it. Um And
Speaker 2: you know, so, but they're not alone in that.
Speaker 2: What I tend to say is
Speaker 2: I actually think that democracies will be and this is not,
Speaker 2: this is like a hard thing to have. Democracies are
Speaker 2: way worse off when it comes to population aging, it
Speaker 2: gets back to this winners and losers thing. The thing
Speaker 2: about demography that I said, I love is that you
Speaker 2: can see the future it requires though long term planning.
Speaker 2: Are you in a political system that can long term plan?
Speaker 2: I do not live in one, I live in one
Speaker 2: where the before the election is over. You're already talking
Speaker 2: about the next election.
Speaker 2: So how do you long term plan to deal with
Speaker 2: a shift in basically the center of gravity of your population,
Speaker 2: you cannot do it. You also have electoral penalties. Think
Speaker 2: about in France when people took to the streets because
Speaker 2: they're trying to raise the blue collar work, you know,
Speaker 2: from like what is it? 55 to 57 or 57
Speaker 2: to 59. There are these huge penalties and checks on
Speaker 2: that if you're in a system
Speaker 2: that is less responsive to pressures from the population and
Speaker 2: in a system that can plan longer term, I think
Speaker 2: you have an advantage there. So I do not see
Speaker 2: as much of a doomsday scenario as maybe other people do.
Speaker 1: I remember in your TED talk, you had this striking
Speaker 1: observation that in Romania Ceausescu tried very hard to force
Speaker 1: people to have babies and it led to like rather
Speaker 1: dire outcomes where people just abandoned the Children, they were
Speaker 1: all ending up in orphanages and of course, very soon thereafter, again,
Speaker 1: fertility rate collapse. So don't, don't try to force it
Speaker 1: now too much because it doesn't really go anywhere.
Speaker 1: The other point you made in your TED talk and
Speaker 1: that will take us to India is that while we
Speaker 1: think of India as this big tail wind characterized economy
Speaker 1: with lots of young people, actually, the working age population
Speaker 1: of India has already peaked, already
Speaker 1: peaked.
Speaker 2: And you know, if you ask back to
Speaker 2: references, if you look at the data on what are,
Speaker 2: what's the preferred fertility rate? It's even lower. I think
Speaker 2: it last I saw was around 1.76 and then the
Speaker 2: overall fertility rate was at two. So as soon as
Speaker 2: people can act on those preferences, it's going to keep
Speaker 2: going lower. Um Yeah, do,
Speaker 2: of course, I came up in a time where everyone
Speaker 2: was obsessed with the bricks and thinking about this is
Speaker 2: the future when we start looking at is India, the
Speaker 2: next China, which is a common question. And I'm doing
Speaker 2: this with a demographic lens. I really notice a difference
Speaker 2: in the human capital situation, particularly when it comes to women.
Speaker 2: And so education, you know that and, and I think
Speaker 2: that's why is a gender lens useful again when you
Speaker 2: have 1.4 billion people, that's a lot of women.
Speaker 2: And you know, the be most highly educated women have
Speaker 2: some of the lowest labor force participation rates. And so
Speaker 2: I don't see the same um setting and backdrop to
Speaker 2: capitalize on. We call the demographic window of opportunity that
Speaker 2: I know you talk about all the time to reap
Speaker 2: a demographic dividend. So my expectation would be you won't
Speaker 2: reap as high of a demographic dividend.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I mean, this issue is something that I have
Speaker 1: talked about a lot in recent years, which is India
Speaker 1: has to raise its female participation rate in the labor force.
Speaker 1: You would not get a demographic dividend. If you a
Speaker 1: don't educate the young and b don't bring the women
Speaker 1: into the labor force. And these are two challenges that
Speaker 1: India still has not fully delivered on
Speaker 1: uh Jennifer attitude. So we talked about initially, you know,
Speaker 1: policymakers and how they're thinking. Uh but societal attitude toward aging,
Speaker 1: are we becoming more respectful of people with gray hair.
Speaker 1: Are we, you know, getting ready for a world where
Speaker 1: there will be lots and lots of people who are
Speaker 1: 65
Speaker 2: you're a bank,
Speaker 2: how much money is there to be made in? Trying
Speaker 2: to look like you're not old, substantial, substantial. I don't
Speaker 2: see it happening anywhere. I mean, you know, when you're
Speaker 2: really looking for it, we can pluck a few things out.
Speaker 2: Like look at the grand influencers. Uh you know, there
Speaker 2: uh some of the modeling campaigns will change and maybe
Speaker 2: your products change a bit, but I think there's still
Speaker 2: a huge fear of aging and I'm, I don't see
Speaker 2: that changing. So
Speaker 1: we're aging, but we're still agist. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we absolutely are.
Speaker 1: Um So
Speaker 1: just as a bottom line that we have powerful demographic forces,
Speaker 1: we're not fully ready to embrace the fact that it's
Speaker 1: heading in that direction, we still think that the policy
Speaker 1: to occur or middle income provision there takes us there.
Speaker 1: So then why do you remain somewhat constructive or optimistic
Speaker 1: about the future?
Speaker 2: That is a very good question. I think that being
Speaker 2: a student of history and being so macro and generalist
Speaker 2: is what makes me optimistic because when you zoom out
Speaker 2: and think about where we were just a few decades ago,
Speaker 2: oh, we're so much better off. So let's just think
Speaker 2: about health and life expectancy. That's the one everyone knows.
Speaker 2: Of course, and what we'll see all the time. Oh,
Speaker 2: cancer rates are on the rise and all that. Well,
Speaker 2: some of that's because we're actually living long enough to
Speaker 2: be able to get cancer.
Speaker 2: Uh So you're always gonna, you have to die of something. So,
Speaker 2: the shift to non communicable diseases though is fantastic. That's
Speaker 2: a marker of success. You don't want people to die
Speaker 2: prematurely of them. But overall, it's a good thing and
Speaker 2: I actually think the same about fertility rates as well
Speaker 2: with ac at a really important caveat. So worldwide, two
Speaker 2: out of three people on this planet of 8 billion
Speaker 2: now live somewhere with below replacement fertility rates.
Speaker 2: They're able to do so in part because they know
Speaker 2: that if they have a fewer, fewer number of Children,
Speaker 2: they're gonna live to reproductive ages. So that is a
Speaker 2: vote actually of, of confidence in the future in one sense. And,
Speaker 2: and so, you know, fertility behavior um is, is an
Speaker 2: example of that. And here's the caveat though,
Speaker 2: if you just told me about a society and tell
Speaker 2: me the name of the country or anything like that.
Speaker 2: And you said this is a country and the total
Speaker 2: fertility rate is six. What do you know about it?
Speaker 2: I would say there are a lot of things that
Speaker 2: are really broken in that society. They probably have very
Speaker 2: low female educational attainment, they probably have rampant child marriage,
Speaker 2: poor health outcomes and probably an unstable government and they're poor.
Speaker 2: If you tell me that a country has a fertility
Speaker 2: rate of around one.
Speaker 2: I also think that there may be, that may be
Speaker 2: an indicator of some things about that society that are
Speaker 2: broken and I think it goes beyond, but it's part
Speaker 2: of it, what you said about optimism for the future.
Speaker 2: I think there is pessimism for the future there. And
Speaker 2: in those societies where it's really low, those gender relations
Speaker 2: tend to be really broken themselves. And so, um if
Speaker 2: you start looking at the household level, you see that
Speaker 2: it's very unequal
Speaker 2: uh the amount of time that men and women spend
Speaker 2: on unpaid labor at home. And then women are often
Speaker 2: highly educated in these societies and they are spending a
Speaker 2: lot of time in work. So I would say they're
Speaker 2: being asked to birth more, work more and care more
Speaker 2: and increasingly they're saying no, just no. And you know,
Speaker 2: you can get this from feminists in the region who
Speaker 2: will say we're just gonna opt out of the system completely. So,
Speaker 2: you know, we think about reproduction is reproducing the system
Speaker 2: you're in. So if you're opting out of that,
Speaker 2: I think that says something about the society itself might
Speaker 2: not be serving their interests,
Speaker 1: right? That's like ultra modern. You're basically saying no to
Speaker 1: the biological imperative.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of a sober note to end on.
Speaker 1: But I, I really appreciate your insights, Jennifer. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your time. Thank you so much. It
Speaker 1: was great to have you and thanks very much to
Speaker 1: our listeners as well. Copy Time was produced by Ken
Speaker 1: Del Rich Violet Lee and Daisy Sharma provided additional assistance.
Speaker 1: All 133 episodes of the podcast are available on youtube
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Speaker 1: This podcast is for information only and does not constitute
Speaker 1: any investment advice. Have a great day.