In the young and smart. Reaching 1 billion residents in 1982, the median person was in their low to mid-20s,

making the country a perfect industrial workforce for a financializing west ready to offshore.

Four decades of applying it has made China rich, but the accompanying urbanization and population control policies have had a cost too.

The median Chinese person is now 38 years old and projected to only grow older, nearly 50 years old by the mid-century.

The new China is becoming old.

This spells trouble for the future because as far as global power and prestige go, being young is at least as important as being rich.

It's also a problem faced by the entirety of the developed world, not just China.

In the West, migration is the substitute for failing to raise native birth rates.

Other regions remain young for now. Much of Africa

maintains a median age of 20 years. Southeast Asia hovers between the late 20s and

early 30s and South America is at 32. Each beats the US's median age of 38. But if birth

rates plunge globally, migration is a partial solution that can only last so long and one that would have to be

competed for.

The Battle for Wealth and the Battle for Youth represent two axes of power.

As far as the next few decades go, it's already getting clear who's going to win.

The axes. Using the two axes of wealth and youth, a simple model of the next few generations divides the globe

into four emerging types of state economies, the rich and relatively young world of the

metropole, the rich but geriatric old world, the older economically

stagnant quiet world and the relatively poor but currently high fertility young world

We can intuit a number of their characteristics with a relatively young and growing population and a high

labor supply, the states of the Metropole, primarily the United States, have what it takes to be

a global economic power and a locus for immigration.

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