Development

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. 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.

The main body of this report consists of four parts.
Part I sets out the main global trends and concentrates on a number of areas where our analysis deviates from received wisdom, namely population growth, globalisation and resource scarcity. This part is relatively technical and is meant to provide the analytical background to the remainder of the report. For the convenience of the busy reader, the other parts have been organised in such a way that they can be read independently.
Part II provides a snapshot of the global economy in 2030, documenting the likely evolution of the main trends combined with the outcome of a multi-country modelling exercise in terms of income and growth, but also in terms of affluence and poverty. This part also stresses some of the less conventional aspects that result from our analysis. The detailed description of the central scenario and an alternative scenario is available in Annex A.
Part III describes the trajectory of Europe’s transition from today’s depressed economy to 2030. The part also contains a summary of the main findings generated by an econometric modelling exercise focused on Europe. Greater details are presented in a separate Working Document presented in Annex D.
Finally, Part IV discusses the policy challenges that arise for Europe from this view of the world in 2030 and the possible emergence of game changers.