Today's subject is something we have wanted to study for some time now: global population growth. We were lucky enough to find a leading expert to join us and today had the pleasure of hosting  Dr. Darrell Bricker. Darrell is a Senior Fellow in Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, the CEO of Public Affairs at Ipsos (the world's leading social and public opinion research firm), and the Co-Author of "Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline." All of us here at Veriten enjoyed reading Empty Planet. As you will hear, Darrell and his Co-Author John Ibbitson not only immersed themselves in all the available UN data but also traveled to six continents to conduct field research and interviews to refine their assumptions as they created their own estimates of global population growth through 2100. It was a fantastic and riveting conversation. 

To help frame our discussion, we kicked off with a few data points on historical global population, global life expectancy, the UN's fertility scenarios for through 2100, and the UN's projected global population (medium-fertility scenario is 10.36 billion in 2100). From there, we jump into a lively conversation with Darrell about Empty Planet, the driving factors behind a potential decline in global population, the issue with population models, a deep dive on cultural factors in Brazil and China, COVID-19's impact, cultural shifts in immigration, and the impact of climate change. We reference Charles Jones's study on the unintended consequences of a declining population. It was a fascinating session and we are thankful to Darrell for sharing his time and expertise. 

The Veriten crew started the show:  Mike Bradley shared an overview of weekly equity and commodity performance, flagging a busy week for earnings in the energy sector and prepped us for our main discussion with a look as debt as a percent of GDP across the top ten economies in the world.  Colin Fenton walked us through the key factors affecting gasoline and natural gas prices and warned the Federal Reserve will need to continue to raise interest rates.