World Data Lab

Retail has stayed at 35% of consumer spending for the last twenty years.

Join our webinar on 23 September to find out what has kept that share steady.

We'll look at the four macro forces moving consumer demand over the next decade, and at what city-level modelling across 9,000+ cities shows that country data misses.

Register: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0ym3Qk0

Global retail adds $15 trillion of spending by 2036, growing 4.8% a year.

Three categories grow faster than that average:

Pharmacy and medical goods: 6.0% a year, +$1.7tn
Personal care and jewellery: 5.8% a year, +$1.3tn
Grocery, food and drinks: 5.0% a year, +$6.7tn

Grocery not only clears the retail average but also adds more new spending than the other seven categories on this chart combined.

We break down what this means for category strategy and city-level demand in our webinar, Future of Retail: Navigating Macro Change & City Growth, on 23 September.

Register: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0ykHhj0

Retail is $25 trillion of what households spend. The other $46 trillion goes to housing, transport, healthcare, services and eating out.

Groceries take $11 trillion of the retail total, close to half. Home and furnishings ($2.8tn) and clothing and footwear ($2.7tn) come next, each about a quarter the size of the grocery basket. Phones and electronics sit at $1.1tn.

Retailers competing for share are competing inside the $25 trillion box. The $46 trillion outside it, rent and fuel and insurance premiums, decides how much of a household budget ever reaches a shop or a checkout page.

We unpack where that spending moves next, and which cities drive the growth, at Future of Retail: Navigating Macro Change & City Growth on 23 September.

Register: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0yjfjD0

Affluent boomers put more of their wallet into healthcare than any other generation.

Hospital services take 1.1 more points of it. Pharmaceuticals take 1.0, social protection 0.9, medical services 0.8. Core boomers show the same pattern on a smaller budget, adding 0.8 points on pharmaceuticals.

Social protection covers care services and support for the elderly, so most of these lines are the direct cost of ageing.

Boomers take that money out of discretionary categories. Restaurants and cafes drop 0.9 points in both classes. Cars drop 0.9 points for affluent boomers, the steepest fall in cars of any generation.

Restaurant groups and car brands courting older consumers now compete with hospital and pharmacy bills for the same wallet.

More at https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0ycGyp0

📊 Chart via Voronoi: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0ycGyq0

The West held 41% of the world's core consumers in 2000. That share is 18% today and reaches 13% by 2036.

The West's own core class barely moves across those 36 years, from 638 million in 2000 to 642 million in 2036 by way of a 763 million peak in 2020. The global core class more than triples across the same period, from 1.54 billion to 4.85 billion. Almost all of that growth sits in APAC, Latin America and Africa.

Any company using Western core consumer behaviour as the default input for global planning is describing 13% of the segment by 2036.

More in A Tale of Two Consumers: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0y7KX00
Chart on Voronoi: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0y7KW00

Our CEO, Wolfgang Fengler, spoke at the EBANX Payments Summit in South Korea last week about the future of emerging markets and what 2036 will look like.

Three numbers from the talk:

930 million new middle-class adults by 2036, with all of the growth in emerging markets.

741 million new online buyers in emerging markets, 92% of them middle class.

$23 trillion spent online in 2036, up from $9.5 trillion in 2026.

Thanks to Estelita Hass Carazzai and the EBANX team for hosting us!

Asia overtakes North America in total consumer spending by 2036, but not in affluence.

APAC spends $20.3 trillion in 2026 against North America's $23.3 trillion, and by 2036 the order reverses at $37.1 trillion to $35.3 trillion.

The composition does not converge with the total. Affluent consumers already account for 83% of North American spending and reach 87% by 2036, while APAC moves from 24% to 34%, so two-thirds of Asian spending in 2036 still comes from consumers below $90 a day. Europe crosses the halfway mark over the decade, going from 49% to 58% affluent. Sub-Saharan Africa is the outlier in the other direction, where 40% of spending today comes from people outside the consumer class entirely.

Chart on Voronoi: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0xYKzB0

Built on the same dataset as A Tale of Two Consumers, our joint report with NIQ: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0xYL4X0

People aged 60 and over make up 15% of the world's population but account for 27% of global consumer spending. That is $19 trillion of the $70 trillion consumers will spend this year.

By 2036 that figure reaches $34 trillion, when close to one in three consumer dollars worldwide will be spent by someone over 60.

Anna Kiknadze and Regan Leggett on where that growth is concentrated, how spending patterns shift as people age, and what it means for companies still designing primarily for younger buyers.

Read it here:

Why the silver economy is reshaping global spending The 60+ consumer is becoming the fastest-growing consumption engine, requiring a shift in corporate strategy across tech, healthcare and lifestyle sectors.

The world will add 640 million people between 2026 and 2036, and 367 million of them will be affluent consumers spending above $90 a day.

Check out our newest graphic on Voronoi:
https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0xRYDk0

And download the full report: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0xRZNb0