Population change is going to have wide-ranging effects on society and the economy. Already, the shrinking size of generations is putting smaller colleges out of business and is expected to hit the housing market hard in the near future [1].

Immigration will have somewhat of a mitigating effect, but sentiment has been pretty anti-immigration for a while. Worse, the rest of the world is experiencing the same decline in birth rates [2], and is developing so fast that the economic argument for a resident of another country to emigrate to the West is shrinking. (Why learn another language to live in Denver, when Shanghai is faster-growing and more modern? [3])

To be sure, there are lots of confounding factors, like the universities and social freedoms available in the West, but on a 50-year span we should expect to see some dramatic shifts due to these demographic evolutions.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/ok-boomer-whos-going-to-buy-you...

[2] https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3039064/chin...

[3] https://a16z.com/2019/10/30/the-power-of-qr-codes/