World Data Lab
Abstract navy chart with rising lime and lavender bars representing consumer spending growth

World Consumer Outlook · Current edition: WCO #10

The latest consumer spending projections.

Consumer spending broken down by 194 countries and every age and spending-power group - projected annually through 2036.

Current edition · WCO #10 · 2025

After the Oil Shock

What’s next for consumer spending - the latest edition of our flagship outlook, with projections from 2025 through 2036.

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A consumer is something a person becomes.

Those 4.7 billion are not a fixed club: about 124 million people cross the consumer line in an average year, and 113 million in 2026, most of them in Asia and Africa. The flow slowed through the financial crisis, went into reverse only once, in the first COVID year, and made the loss back within twelve months. The consumers you will serve in 2050 are forming now, far from where demand sits today.

+124M
People join the consumer class in an average year, 2012 to 2030
−65M
In 2020, the one year the flow reversed
A steady current of new consumers
Net additions to the consumer class · millions per year
Net additions to the consumer class, millions of people, 2012-2030. Source: World Data Intelligence.
See the data
Net additions to the consumer class, millions of people, 2012-2030.
YearNew consumers (million)
2012129
2013138
2014131
2015121
2016141
2017135
2018141
2019112
2020-65
2021256
202293
2023150
2024135
2025129
2026113
2027123
2028123
2029123
2030122

190+

Countries in the outlook

12

Years of projections

4

Income tiers modelled

100+

Demographic breaks

What's inside

The definitive view on the next decade of consumer spending

The flagship report from World Data Lab. Every edition breaks down consumer spending across 194 countries and every age and spending-power group, from 2025 through 2036 - the same methodology used across World Data Intelligence, distilled into a single narrative report.

Country projections

Consumer spending trajectories for every one of 190+ countries, benchmarked and comparable.

Demographic breaks

100+ age × spending-power segments so you can see who drives which category.

Category trajectories

12 top-level and 200+ sub-categories modelled year-by-year through 2036.

Download our latest webinar deck

WCO #10
After the Oil Shock

Get the full executive briefing deck - the same one our team walks Fortune 500 leadership through. Consumer spending projections through 2036, country-by-country, category-by-category.

  • The latest post-oil-shock baseline for global consumer spending
  • Where the next 700 million consumers enter the middle class
  • Category winners and losers, mapped country by country
  • City-level highlights for 100 priority markets
  • Silver Generation, Gen Z and Gen X spending trajectories
  • Executive-ready charts you can drop into board decks
Go to the WCO #10 edition page

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