Weekly economics overview
Only 27% of people between 25 and 29 years old own a house. 44 years ago, 58% of this cohort owned a house. According to a housing expert, the explanation can be two-fold: fewer young people want to own a house and usually start a family later, and in the big cities, the price has become too prohibitive for young people to afford living there. A housing reform is planned for this autumn. It is exciting to see what the government will do about it.
The Norwegian competition authority’s investigation into three grocery store chains resulted in a fine of 3.1 billion DKK. The chains are accused of price cooperation (effectively copying each other’s pricing). The Danish competition authority is looking closely at the case, as the grocery store chains include Norgesgruppen (Kiwi, Meny), Rema1000 and Coop. An investigation on the Danish side will follow.
Pandora, once a small jeweler’s shop in Copenhagen founded in 1980, has become a jewelry giant with thousands of stores around the world. A third of the revenue made by the company comes from the US, where they sit at 2% of the jewelry market. Who helped them on the US market? Pamela Anderson. The company is expected to declare a record-breaking turnover of over 30 billion DKK.
Megadrones will be produced at the airport in Odense. A US company opened a factory at Odense Airport, where they want to produce 200 megadrones per year. Thunderstrike will be the first megadrone producer in Denmark and the third drone producer. Why Odense? It has the largest test facility for drones in Europe, a cluster of robotics start-ups, and a focus from the local university on drone development. The government wants to make Odense a NATO center of excellence for drones.
The government will reward municipalities that establish renewable energy parks. 200 million DKK have been prepared for the municipalities that will allocate the highest percentage of land for renewable energy parks. There are no conditions attached to the reward money, meaning that municipalities can use it as they wish. It’s not known yet how many municipalities will be able to get the reward.
Focus
The low fertility rate in Denmark and the rest of Europe means that the number of Europeans will reduce by half in the next six decades. The population in Denmark is expected to decline to 3 million by 2080. As the new “normal” for European families is one child or two, the fertility rate has reached a historical low. There is no European country where the fertility rate is over two to maintain the population level. The low fertility rate combined with a long life expectancy means that only a few decades from now, Europe will be the land of the elderly.
- This scenario only applies if immigration is not taken into consideration. The number of internationals in Denmark is constantly growing, keeping the working population within reasonable numbers to support an increasingly older society.
- The world population is expected to peak at almost 10 billion people and then decline from there. The only parts of the world with an expected population increase are Africa and India.
The number of bad debtors has significantly declined in the past decade. 170,166 people in Denmark are registered on the bad debtors register (RKI), which tracks those who don’t pay dues on time. Only five years ago, the number was way above 200,000. There are massive differences between the municipalities, as some have 1-2% of the population on the RKI register, while others, like Lolland, passed 8%. Nationwide, the average bad debt is around 49,500 DKK per person.
