Political and social forecasts cover a huge range of subject matters. They tend to be much less quantitative than forecasts in other issue areas.
Political and social forecasters draw our attention to the need for indicators very different from GNP or GNP per capita. For instance, Henderson (1996) suggests attention to the United Nations Development ProgramHuman Development Index (HDI) and data such as working hours (especially for women). She also points approvingly to Herman DalyIndex of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW). It is often difficult to obtain data across large numbers of countries for such measures (HDI is an exception), much less time series data.
Specific forecasts of the global progress (or regression) of democracy, of womenrights, or even of literacy are rare (although general assertions of continued progress are relatively common). Thus the forecasts of IFs are relatively unique.
With respect to global power distributions, forecasts that Chinaeconomic and military power will surpass that of the U.S. sometime in the first half of the 21st century have become common.
Many observers (e.g. Boulding and Boulding, 1995) anticipate continued growth in the strength of global political institutions (both intergovernmental and nongovernmental).
Some observers have seen the ongoing disappearance of languages and therefore of the cultural groups tied to those languages and projected that into the future, but without numerical values relative to the approximately 10,000 language groupings in place today.