The Center Cannot Hold: Demographic Change and International Security 2010-2050
The Social Change Project at the Mercatus Center presented a lecture by Jack Goldstone, Hazel Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University and Director of the Center for Global Policy.
Professor Goldstone discussed the implications of the coming shifts in global economic power. Plausible estimates of global economic growth patterns suggest a stunning shift in the center of global economic growth. Due to a combination of demographic and development trends, 70-80% of all economic growth in the world from 2010 to 2050 will occur outside of the US and Europe. A situation in which the major loci of economic growth is so detached from centers of military and financial power has not been seen since the late 19th century and may again provoke an economic and military scramble for access to new markets. The talk drew on Dr. Goldstone's recent article in Foreign Affairs, "The New Population Bomb: The Four Megatrends The Will Change the World."
Jack Goldstone is the Virginia E. and John T. Hazel Jr. Professor at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center.
Dr. Goldstone's work on social movements, revolutions, democratization, and economic growth has won the Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award of the American Sociological Association, and Fellowships from the U.S. Institute for Peace, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is a senior member of the Political Instability Task Force and is Director of the Center for Global Policy at Mason. The author or editor of 9 books and nearly 100 research articles, Professor Goldstone is a consultant to the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.