policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
The kids are alright
Futurist uses big data to predict
young people’s destinies.
Phil Ruthven interviewed by Loren Smith
F
uturist Phil Ruthven thinks the kids
are more than alright. The founder of
global research firm IBISWorld and the
newly formed Ruthven Institute has nearly
50 years of experience, as well as access to
volumes of big data, to support this forecast.
His book, The Future for Our Kids,
examines what expansive areas like
education, politics, health and employment
will look like for young people once they’re
adults. In doing so, it purports to help
them, their caregivers and their educators
prepare for 2030 and beyond.
His analysis, which he vouches is the most
fact-based of its kind in Australia, if not the
world, is largely optimistic.
“I think it’s very sad when young marrieds
tell me they don’t want to bring kids into this
world,” he says.
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For one, he thinks the fear about a lack
of jobs isn’t true. “Today’s kids will look back
on our current working ways and think that
employees are almost treated like slaves or
serfs,” he posits.
Campus Review spoke with Ruthven about
his insights and whether the upcoming
generations will have it easier or harder than
their forebears.
CR: Why did you decide to write a book about
children’s futures at this point in time?
PR: I wanted to leave some sort of a legacy,
not only for my own descendants, but for
all adults and children, whether they be at
school or universities. I wanted to give them
a much better perspective than we tend
to get from most media today. I wanted to
give people composure about the future,
because people worry a lot – always have
done. And I wanted to provide optimism to
people and their descendants about where
the world is going.
Can you tell me, first of all, what generation
you’re focusing on?
It certainly includes Millennials, and of course
Generation Z, who are those aged about 16
or younger.
How far into the future are you looking in
this book?
Some of it goes through to the middle of
the century and beyond. For example, when
I talk about the ethnicity of Australia – the
cultures we’re going to have – I make some
comments almost into the next century. I do
that because this century is unusual in that
it’s the first century in which we have started
to really lock ourselves into the Asian area.
For the previous centuries, certainly under
European settlement, we were locked more
into the European economy and cultures,
and perhaps the American cultures and
economy as well.
In other areas, very rarely have I looked at
less than five or 10 years into the future. In
other words, giving people a much longer-
term perspective than they would normally
take in their daily lives. A year is quite often
a long time in the life of a person. And that
really is why fear sets into families, because
they’re a bit scared to look beyond that, and
I’ve tried to introduce a lot more optimism
and composure into the long‑term future.
I occasionally run into people who are
young marrieds who say, “Oh no, I’m not
going to have any children. You can’t bring
children into the world of tomorrow.”
And I always feel saddened by that,
because history shows that life is getting
better all the time, not worse. Sure, there
are always new fears to worry about, but
when you look at the rising standard of living,
longer life expectancy and falling crime
rates, there’s an awful lot of justification for
optimism rather than fear.
You do, however, say that this next generation
will face key challenges. What are they?
Two areas that are problematic for people are
crime and drugs. In the case of drugs, I think
most experts would agree that the damage
we’re doing is due to prohibition. We need
to decriminalise the drug scene so we can
control it.
Another fearful area for many people is
jobs. There’s a feeling out there that there will
not be enough jobs in the future because
of robots and mechanisation. I can disprove
that worry very quickly: in the last five years,
we’ve created over six times more new jobs
than we’ve lost, and that’s our market of
change for almost the rest of century.
Moving on to the positives, what are some
things that young people can look forward to?
The most obvious one is a longer life. It’s
quite sobering to realise that if we only
went back 200 years to the year 1800,
life expectancy for a man or woman was
38 years. Today, it’s about 82, and before the
end of century, the average is probably going
to creep up to 90 or 100.
Secondly, we’re going to be working fewer
hours per year, and that’s been patterned all