While Goldman Sachs still expects the BRICs to join the U.S. and Japan as the world's biggest economies by 2050, the bank predicted this month that the four nations' contribution to the global expansion will diminish during the next few decades. Economic growth in the BRICs may fall to about 4 percent by 2050 as working-age populations dwindle, Goldman Sachs said.
The number of people aged 15 to 64 in Russia has already started to drop, while Chinese workers may peak at around 1 billion and begin falling by 2020, according to estimates by the United Nations. Brazil's peak may come by 2040, with India's topping out by 2060, the New York-based United Nations said. The U.S. will keep adding workers through 2100, the forecasts show.
"In the last decade, simply recognizing that the BRICs were the story was largely enough to propel outsized investment returns," Goldman's Wilson wrote in this month's outlook report. "It is much harder to accept that simply believing in their long-term growth dynamics can be a sufficient investment thesis now, if it ever was."