Youth lead GCC spending boom to outperform global peers

The GCCis on the cusp of a decades-long consumer boom, with its young, expanding and increasingly affluent population driving a wave of spending that will eclipse many advanced economies.

- Issac John [e-mail]

New research by Oxford Economics forecasts that the region’s consumer sector will outperform global peersfor years to come, powered by robust demographics, surging labour participation and sustained migration flows that are fuelling household income and demand across all segments.

Oxford Economics’ newly-appointed Head of GCC Macroeconomic Analysis, Azad Zangana, emphasises that youthful population, high migration and increasing labour participation will fuel both per-capita and aggregate consumption across the region.

Zangana notes that one of the key pillars of the outlook is the age-profile shift in earnings and spending: as populations move into mid-career and _ higher-income brackets, household payment capacity rises, and consumption per-capita accelerates accordingly.

In the GCC’s case the outlook is especially favourable. Public data show that the region’s average age in 2024 stood at 30.7 years, the youngest among comparable high-income blocs. By contrast, the United States averaged 38.3 years and China 39.6 years. The projection that the GCC’s average age will increase by only 1.8 years between 2024 and 2050 —versus 7.2 years in the OECD area and 12.6 years in China — illustrates the size of the head-start into the prime-earning cohort that the region enjoys.