Phl 2050 and Generation Z | as easy as ABC

A couple of years have lapsed since an HSBC study said the Philippines would be top 16 among the largest economies in the world. That is almost unimaginable because it’s like being just next to the G7 and E7. The best thing today is, after two years, the study is still holding up. What a time to be reminded of this, courtesy of the recent conference of the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (FINEX) on financial inclusion.

I got excited again about a future I could possibly see, God willing, before my eyes close for the last time. I am excited for our country surviving our President’s verbal counter-attack against the superpowers and supercontinents. I look forward with optimism to surviving the bullets not meant for us law-abiding citizens who are drug-free, except for occasional intakes of antibiotics and cough medicines (and ok, throw in there maintenance medicines).

To be fair, HSBC is not a lone wolf in the wilderness. PwC itself conducted a global study and its report “The World in 2050” ranked the Philippine economy at number 20. Like all studies, certain assumptions are made, or you can’t come up with a user-friendly report. So these studies assume the Philippines will achieve its high growth rate year on year, allowing just a bit of slowdown in some years.

The studies assume substantial and steady investment in infrastructure, and that means people will not be required to live half their lives inside cars or make EDSA their halfway house. Note there is a projection that come 2050, the Philippines will have a population of about 150 million. So it is assumed we will figure out where to put all those cars and all those people.

Both studies assume an investment-driven growth, which also means a fair share of foreign direct investments in the region. So liberalization of foreign equity limitations is much awaited and we’re still waiting. If we are allergic to foreign ownership of land (that can drive real estate values sky-high and make it unaffordable to Filipinos with lesser income), there are still many places where we can have more foreign equity leeway to have world-class services and access like in public utilities and schools.

If the HSBC study ranks the Philippines only next to Russia, which is at number 15, it is not because our President and President Putin will soon be close friends. We have what countries like Russia and China is not expected to have – that sustained demographic sweet spot, that working age between 15 and 54 comprising 56 percent of our population where Generation Z is in fact represented at 33.71 percent. 

Credit that to our extended family support structure and to the availability of household staff who deserve more credit than we already give them. It becomes more pronounced if you look at the reverse problem that Japan has. Their population has been decreasing by about one million per year. Many women in Japan are just not having babies because they would need to give up their newfound freedom to have a career and financial independence.

Culturally, the mantra I hear from quite respectable Japanese men is that no woman will ever be sorry they spent time being a mother. Practically, getting babysitters in Japan are quite costly and not in abundance.

Not in our country where it is a common site to see in the malls a mother pushing a baby in a cart, while the father carries a cute toddler – while their firstborn is running amok as if he has fire in his behind, and of course the yaya runs after that thing. When the kids get too big for the cart, you can see pets taking their place being pushed inside those baby carts and...okay, Filipinos just love babies. And our culture and system afford us to have them.

That, with all levity aside, is not only our country’s redemption, but exaltation. It’s the proud entrance from our deep bench of our own Generation Z. This is the generation born under the new normal where major natural disasters happen on an annual basis, and people around the world get to watch videos of tsunamis and people standing on rooftops, while the other nearby houses get swept away. This is the world where senseless wars happen to obliterate homes and make refugees out of millions, and these human beings who have no choice in what they suffer from are branded as possible terrorists and are refused entry and assistance by super-economies. These are the days when a person sipping takeout coffee to work winds up in an ICU after a bomb explodes in public transport.

The reaction to all these of the Gen Z, these children at such tender ages is empathy. They are online and on mobile phones for as young as you can imagine and they see the world, its beauty and horrors, every day, real time. And your heart will melt because they don’t just see it and express compassion, they try to do something about it. Like this six-year-old boy who wrote a letter to President Obama to please find this four -year-old Syrian boy with a bloodied face, sitting still and resigned to his fate at the back of an ambulance. The American boy told the US president that he would make the Syrian boy his brother and that he would teach him addition and subtraction  and how to ride a bike, and his American sister would share her big blue-white bunny.

It’s the sad realities that can hit anyone in any given day that make the Gen Z feel less happy and less entitled, and that can truly make them pursue a purpose-driven mentality. If their parents are successful, they would not wish to pretend they will start from scratch. They can do immediately what they want. Last Sunday I talked about how the Gen Y, our millennials, are into social enterprise. They are CEOs of businesses that can’t fail so long as it helps others. There is an estimate of more than 300,000 social enterprises in the country (according to Ateneo professor, Dr. Lisa Dacanay).

Gen Z sees the CSR work of their Gen X predecessors. They will pick it up. They will see the levelled-up involvement of their Generation Y parents, and they will outperform them because their hearts are in the right place. The success of their parents helps a lot because they do not need to lift themselves out of poverty, but they will help people have better lives, and they will continue to exert this positive influence. For them, inclusivity is the norm.

Populous Philippines, the country reputed to have organized chaos in public places, the country that allegedly makes babies as their pastime, may soon make the big time. Demographic dividend, they say. I say our Gen Z is our capital. It is more than a century after our national hero declared “the youth is the hope of our nation.” Come 2050, my dream, if my heart still beats, is to be able to say, because of our youth, our nation has finally arrived.