The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm

One, Two, Three . . . A Million, A Billion, A Trillion

I don’t think most people, especially politicians and newscasters, know the difference between a million, a billion, and a trillion. Try counting softly to yourself.

If you could count one number per second, it would take you eleven-and-a-half, twenty-four-hour days to reach one million. If you continue counting, in about thirty-two years you will reach one billion. At one number per second, reaching one trillion will take you almost 32,000 years.

Isn’t it odd that we throw these numbers around like we understand them, when in fact we cannot even count that high? To understand demography you need to understand numbers. There are over 6.5 billion people in the world. China and India both ...