Not really an investment advice, but IMHO the one of most important things to look at are the population pyramids. They represent a great way to predict some aspects of the future based on things already happened and can not be fundamentally changed afterwards (people born on nor born in certain years, though to an extent it can be "changed" by importing people from somewhere else). If the next generations are going to be very small, then who will be economically active so their investments are profitable and in particular, who will rent their properties? Of course a lot of other factors play a role, e.g. the level of education, infrastructure and market development – the things necessary for people to create and consume value. But, there should be people in the first place – so let's examine the demographic factor in isolation.

Let's look onto South America countries for example.

The best shape of the population pyramid is the one where generation size monotonically declines with age. I.e. the younger the generation is, the bigger it should be. The youngest generations will become adults and enter workforce and become consumers, in particular they will need a place to live. So investments of older generations are going to be viable, either in form of rent from apartments, or other forms of investment requiring different forms of economic activity to thrive. Even solidarity pension systems (which are not investment schemes but Ponzi schemes) are going to work.

We can see the best shapes in Paraguay, Bolivia, Suriname and Guyana:

Bolivian pyramid is so nice that I suspect it may be based on fake reporting.

Brazil, Chile and Colombia have the worst forms, the bottoms of their pyramids are upside down, and that transition happened long ago. The biggest generations are still among the economically active, and it will look good short term, but as they will age, smaller younger populations will have to support the larger older ones.

Ecuador, Uruguay, Argentina and Peru have somewhat better shapes, with less younger generations affected, or to smaller extent. From them, Ecuador and Peru situations are the best from demographic viewpoint, actually looking closer to the four countries having the nicest pyramids.

Venezuela is the strange outlier with the most weird shape, probably most affected by emigration due to socialist autocracy. But from demographic point of view it looks fairly well, until present 10-20 year olds will retire. There are other causes for Venezuela to probably be a bad place for investment/retirement, but if magically everything else turns well (stable capitalism for a long term), it may experience a bunch of good decades.

https://populationpyramids.org/
#demographics #world #statistics #retirement #investment