The world will look different in 2050: Climate change will progress, many workforces will shrink as populations age, and emerging technologies will change the way we work and live. But what are the implications of those changes, and what can we do to shape the best possible version of our future?

In this project, Charles Kenny and other experts from CGD and beyond build a series of forecasts of different aspects of the world by 2050—projecting global growth, poverty and aid, manufacturing and services employment and the future of work, the effects of climate change, demographic transitions, and more. These forecasts explore the range of possible outcomes and sketch out several different possible versions of the future—optimistic ones where the world is more equal, prosperous, and innovative, and more pessimistic ones where it is the opposite.

Whether we end up in the more negative version of the future or the more positive one has less to do with luck than with the choices political leaders make over the coming years on a few crucial types of policies, on migration, services trade, innovation policy, aid flows, and more—as this project explores.

Explore our new interactive tool to create your own scenarios: