HONG KONG (AP) ¡ª U.S. futures and Asian shares traded mostly lower on Friday, tracking Wall Street¡¯s losses as technology stocks again dragged on markets.Bitcoin sank to roughly half its record price, giving back all it gained since U.S. President Donald Trump won the White House for his second term.
Tokyo¡¯s Nikkei 225 was up 0.5% to 54,073.52, recovering from losses earlier this week, with technology-related stocks leading gains. SoftBank Group rose 1.9% and chipmaker Tokyo Electron rose 3%. Japan will also be holding its general election on Sunday, in which Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi expects to win a stronger public mandate for her policies.
South Korea¡¯s Kospi lost 1.7% to 5,076.69, weighed down by tech shares. Samsung Electronics, the country¡¯s biggest listed company, fell 0.9%. Chipmaker SK Hynix was down 0.6%.
Hong Kong¡¯s Hang Seng fell 1.2% to 26,569.14. The Shanghai Composite index was flat at 4,075.37.
Against the backdrop of the technology sell-off this week, Bitcoin, the world¡¯s largest cryptocurrency, saw dimming enthusiasm and was trading about 9% lower at just under $65,000 early Friday, after it briefly sank over 12% to below $64,000 on Thursday. That¡¯s down from a record of above $124,000 in October.
Adam Whitmore
"Baby boomers have always been in the spotlight, regardless of their age," said William Frey, a demographer at Brookings. "They were a large generation, but they also accomplished significant things."
According to Frey, all baby boomers will be 65 and older by the end of this decade, and the number of persons 80 and older will double in 20 years.
While children under the age of 18 are expected to decrease from nearly 21% to a predicted 18.4%, the proportion of elderly persons in the U.S. population is expected to increase from 18.7% in 2025 to nearly 23% by 2050.
In five years, the U.S. population will begin to decline if no immigration occurs. The Congressional Budget Office's estimates, which were updated in September to take into consideration the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, predict that at that point, deaths will outnumber births. Immigration and more births than deaths are the main causes of population growth.
Longer lifespans brought on by improved health care and decreased fertility rates are exacerbating America's aging population.
The CBO projects that the average life expectancy at birth in the United States will increase from 78.9 years in 2025 to 82.2 years in 2055. Additionally, the fertility rate has been steadily declining since the Great Recession in 2008, when it was 2.08, or about the 2.1 rate required for children to numerically replace their parents. In 2025, it reached 1.6.
Boomer milestones are missed by younger generations.
Because they are better educated, delaying marriage to concentrate on their jobs, and delaying having their first kid until later in life, women are having fewer children. Fewer children are also a result of rising child-rearing costs, inaccessible child care, and unaffordable housing.
According to Kenneth Johnson, a senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire, this has resulted in 11.8 million fewer births than what may have happened if the fertility rate had remained at Great Recession levels.
"I had children while I was young. "That's what we did," said West, who has two daughters, a stepdaughter, and six grandchildren. "We graduated from college, got married, and had babies." "It's very different because my kids got married in their 30s."
According to a recent Census Bureau research, young persons in the United States in the twenty-first century have not grown up like baby boomers did. Nearly half of those between the ages of 25 and 34 had left their parents' house, found employment, gotten married, and had children by 1975. Less than 25% of American adults had reached these milestones by the early 2020s.West, whose grandson is 21 years old, knows why: They don't have the opportunities her generation did. According to Paul Quirk, her grandson, it all boils down to unstable finances.
According to Quirk, "they were able to buy a lot of things, a lot cheaper."West continued, "The economy is frustrating all of her grandchildren.""To afford a place, you have to get three roommates," she stated. "We had a job waiting for us after we graduated from college. Additionally, master's degree holders will now work at fast food restaurants while they search for legitimate employment.
Subscribe
