What's New?

Important Documents

• The UK's G8 Priorities
• Growth and Human Potential of G8 Economies
• IMF on Longevity Risk
• G8 Retirement and Pensions: Canadian Views

Key Dates

• January 1, 2013: UK Presidency of G8
• January 1, 2014: Russian Presidency of G8

The advanced mature economies represented in the Group of 8, G8, share long standing experience of cooperation in addressing major geopolitical and economic challenges from food security to cybercrime to development assistance. To ensure that policy decisions at G8 take into account the views of the entrepreneurs and employers, the Chamber formed a coalition with the most representative business organizations of G8 economies.

G8 Members

• Canada 
• Japan
• France 
• Russia
• Germany 
• United Kingdom
• Italy
• United States

The Group of Eight (G-8) was conceived when Russia first participated in part of the 1994 Naples Summit of the G-7 industrialized countries. In 1998, Russia joined as full participant, which marked the establishment of the Group of Eight, which convenes annual summits of the heads of state or government of the major industrial countries to discuss the major economic and political issues on their agenda. Although, Russia has joined the group, thereby forming the Group of Eight, the G-7 continues to function as a forum for discussion of economic and financial issues and usually includes the Managing Director of the IMF and G-7 finance ministers and central bank governors.

B8 Partners

Current B8 policy focus

Societal investment in longer and healthier life, and more mature communities should promote the prosperity of G-8 countries by leveraging their ability to create and enable the world’s best educated workers, entrepreneurs and citizens. 

In the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan, life-spans have been stretching about 2 years longer in every decade for over a century. Spanish women today live on average to about 83 years old. A child born today in France has a one-in-two chance of living to 100.

Whether demographic aging will in fact slow growth depends on whether or not countries and citizens embrace reforms to accommodate the change.  Changes in labor practices as well as reforms in social safety nets, personal and public savings practices, and public spending, may avert the negative impact of population aging.

• Longer work lives for individuals: some made more valuable by population aging, some made less
• Countries, cities and other localities must fight to stay demographically young
• An older population is a more diverse population:  uniform treatment of older people is counterproductive

The Boon of a Maturing World

The aging of the world is inseparable from its prosperity and the rise everywhere of an ever-growing global middle class.