What-if scenarios

AI-built hypothetical scenarios that start from official statistics and step through what could happen next. They are not forecasts.

• Hypothetical If current trends continue: Australia's population and ageing to 2050, compared with Japan
  This hypothetical explores what could happen if Australia's low fertility and its current reliance on migration for population growth simply carry on to 2050. Today Australia is markedly younger than Japan: older people make up 18.09% of Australia's population in 2025, against 29.99% in Japan. Fertility has slipped to 1.48 births per woman in 2024, while population growth slowed from 1.98% in 2024 to 1.53% in 2025. Three paths show how ageing, labour supply and public services might evolve depending mainly on how strong migration stays. These are illustrations built on assumptions, not forecasts.
• Hypothetical If China sharply cut imports from Australia: three scenarios
  This hypothetical explores what could happen if China sharply reduced its purchases of Australian goods and services for several years. Starting from official World Bank figures on Australia's trade exposure, growth and unemployment, it steps through a mild, a central and a severe path. The size of the effect depends on how much of the cut falls on hard-to-redirect exports, how quickly other buyers step in, and how the dollar and domestic policy respond. The data cannot say how large China's share of Australian exports is, so the paths describe sizes in words, not numbers.