I developed three scenarios of the United States’ future from 2022 to 2050 to make sense of the major issues facing US society. Those scenarios and the process used to create them were described in an article “Three Scenarios of the United States’ Future – 2022 to 2050,” published in the management journal Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 50, No. 6, in November 2022.

Issues with the widest ranges of plausible outcomes in the next three decades—according to the issue experts—were used to craft the three scenarios—Socially Divided, Security United, and Economy Focused—while the major issues with narrower ranges of plausible outcomes, where experts were in relative agreement on long-term outcomes, turned into the common assumptions and backdrop of the three scenarios. This second group of pressing issues are the predictable developments of the United States’ future.

The Predictable Part of the United States’ Future

The relatively predictable issues are important because they can’t be avoided. We must plan for them, regardless of how the more uncertain issues play out. Some large-impact, predictable issues were obvious from the start, like population growth, because demographic trends of the past often suggest reasonably certain outcomes in the future. However, for many issues the experts’ agreements on future outcomes couldn’t be identified until the experts’ views of possible outcomes had been examined and judged to fall within narrow ranges. For example, there are critical issues in the areas of climate-change, China’s government leadership, and US population attitudes, where experts generally agree on the outcomes thirty years from now. 

Projected Global Population

	2020	2050	Growth/yr
Asia	4.64 billion	5.29 billion	0.5 %
Africa	1.34	2.49	2.1
Europe	0.75	0.71	(0.1)
North America	0.37	0.43	0.5
World	7.79	9.74	0.8

Russia invasion of Ukraine

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will end in 2023 with a cease-fire and Russia occupying much of the southeastern part of Ukraine. The US and EU countries implement economic sanctions to “silo” Russia from Europe except for essential energy, minerals, and food flows.

Key assumptions about U.S. society

The US population, regardless of their racial, ethnic, or social makeup, will continue to share three priorities for the federal government: Improve the economy and job situation, manage public crises (pandemics, natural disasters, etc.), and ensure the population’s security and safety (military attacks, terrorism, domestic crime, corruption, etc.).

The Democratic and Republican parties will adjust their policy platforms and communication strategies to attract voters, and the U.S. population will split their voting for candidates between the two parties.

Because of an aging population, total public benefits to the U.S. population aged 60 and over are expected to reach approximately 20 percent of annual GDP in 2050 from 12 percent in 2010. For comparison purposes, in Germany total public benefits to its population 60 and over is expected to grow from 17 percent in 2010 to 25 percent in 2050.

US K–12 students will continue to test average or just below average in literacy, math and science compared to other OECD countries. A substantial percent of US 15-year-olds (10 to 15 percent) will continue to lack the skills to read, master basic math, and understand scientific concepts. For comparison purposes, in 2015 13% of all students in OECD countries lacked the same rudimentary reading, math, and science skills.

China developments

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will remain in power and direct China’s economic and foreign policies for the foreseeable future. CCP representatives will continue to occupy senior positions in every medium- to large- Chinese company to ensure the strategies and actions of Chinese state-owned and private companies align with and support government policies.

China will remain focused on regaining its position at the top of the Asia hierarchy and supplanting the U.S. as the world’s dominant superpower. 

China will continue to refine the country’s economic statist model of state capitalism, intervention in markets, regulation of private-sector activities, and subsidization of Chinese companies, goods and services, and the stealing of foreign intellectual property and data.

China will have the world’s largest economy in 2050. In 2021 China’s economy was essentially the same size as the US’s economy. In the two common methods of cross-country comparison of economic size—the Nominal GDP method and the purchasing power parity (PPP) method—the US economy was 36 percent larger than China’s economy using the Nominal GDP method (the Nominal GDP of the United States in 2021 was $22.9 trillion and China’s Nominal GDP was $16.9 trillion, while China’s economy was about 18 percent larger than the US’s GDP in PPP$ (China’s GDP in PPP$ in 2021 was $26.7 trillion and the US’s GDP in PPP$ was $22.7 trillion in 2021). China’s economy in Nominal GDP is expected to surpass the US’s Nominal GDP in the next ten years. 

China will struggle to maintain high-economic growth rates in the future because China’s work force will shrink by 15 to 20 percent from 2021 to 2050, or about 150 million workers. While the world’s population will continue to grow at about 1 percent per year, reaching 9.7 billion people in 2050, China with about 1.4 billion, will shrink in population by almost 1 percent per year. 

Foreseeable use of coal, oil and natural gas

To fuel economic growth, emerging economies will require 60–70 percent of the world’s energy from 2020 to 2050, with China accounting for around 20 percent of the world’s total and India over 10 percent.

Competitive pressures in energy markets will result in technological innovation, energy efficiencies, lower energy costs, and lower energy intensity. GDP growth of emerging economies from 2020 to 2050 will drive down global energy intensity by 40 to 50 percent.

The consumption of hydrocarbons will decline worldwide from 80 percent of all energy consumed in 2018 to at best 40 percent of energy consumed in 2050.

Unavoidable climate-change developments

According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment reports published in 2021 and 2022, the world has warmed by 2ºF/1.1ºC since the second half of the 19th century because of greenhouse gas emissions and will increase by another 0.9°F/0.5°C to 1.8°F/1.0°C by 2050.

Because the earth is 2°F warmer today, the world is experiencing temperature extremes, heavier periods of precipitation, and more drought conditions. 

As the globe gets incrementally warmer over the next 30 years, what we are experiencing today will become incrementally but not catastrophically worse.

In the US, the IPCC projects overall precipitation on average will be the same or greater compared to the last 150 years, even in the southwestern states. However, the variability in precipitation from year to year will be greater and for many parts of the US the droughts will be greater.

Large scale projects in afforestation (planting trees) and direct carbon capture systems won’t have a significant impact on greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere before 2050 because the technologies can’t be commercialized and implemented in time.

Expected global health developments

As a result of the world’s economic growth and increased life expectancies over the last fifty years, there will be increased spending on health care. No nation will be spared. 

There will be more health epidemics. However, the experience of battling Covid19 over the last three years will lead to better responses and societies won’t be as disrupted as they were from 2020 – 2022. 

Nuclear weapon proliferation

Iran joins the nuclear-weapon club, and so does Japan after North Korean provocations.

Digital data assumption

Digital data volumes will grow at Moore’s-Law-like rates for the next 30 years—on the order of 25% per year.

Next Step: Think about the Implications of the Predictable Developments

Before preparing for the future as represented by the three scenarios—Socially Divided, Security Oriented and Economy Focused—think about all the above predictable developments together and ask yourself, “What will be the threats and opportunities I will face with these developments?” And, “What should I do, starting today, to minimize the threats and take advantage of the opportunities?