Demographics are the "sleeper driver" that will affect several other trends, according to Paul Laudicina, managing officer and chairman of the board for A.T. Kearney. The author of World Out of Balance, he put demographics at the top of the list of five drivers of change; others include the "new consumer" and natural resources and environmental regulation and activism. "Demographics is clearly driving lots of the other trends," he said. "Certainly in the last 50 years we've had greater advances in life expectancy than in the last 5,000."