PriceWaterhouseCoopers: "World in 2050 The BRICs and beyond: prospects, challenges and opportunities"

Some weekend reading material courtesy of PwC (January, 2013):

...1.1. Key findings
The world economy is projected to grow at an average rate of just over 3% per annum from 2011 to 2050, doubling in size by 2032 and nearly doubling again by 2050.

China is projected to overtake the US as the largest economy by 2017 in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms and by 2027 in market exchange rate terms. India should become the third ‘global economic giant’ by 2050, a long way ahead of Brazil, which we expect to move up to 4th place ahead of Japan.
Russia could overtake Germany to become the largest European economy before 2020 in PPP terms and by around 2035 at market exchange rates. Emerging economies such as Mexico and Indonesia could be larger than the UK and France by 2050, and Turkey larger than Italy.

Outside the G20, Vietnam, Malaysia and Nigeria all have strong long-term growth potential, while Poland should comfortably outpace the large Western European economies for the next couple of decades.

1.2. Projections to 2050
This report updates our long-term global economic growth projections, which were last published in January 2011. These are based on a PwC model that takes account of projected trends in demographics, capital investment, education levels and technological progress.

Chart 1 shows estimated relative GDP growth rates for the 24 economies in the study over the whole 2011-50 period. We can see that emerging economies tend to grow at 4% per annum or more, while advanced economies grow at around 2% or less – we will continue to live in a two-speed world economy for some decades to come as a catch up process continues.

Chart 1: Breakdown of components of average real growth in GDP at PPP (2011 – 2050)...

...MUCH MORE (28 page PDF)