Thinking differently

Economic Growth in Germany and Beyond - Quo Vadis? Professor Dr Christoph M Schmidt, president, RWI Essen Schmidt highlighted two big long-term trends that are impacting the Germany economy: the first is globalisation and the expansion of the EU and the second is the changing demographic situation. He focused on the latter. "We have seen low birth rates since the 1970s or so and we have observed a growth in life expectancies. So we have an older average age in the population but we also have a shrinking number of people," he said. Commentators tend to get gloomy about this - Germany ...