Convergence of demand for construction in terms of consumption of cement in developed countries
The purpose of this study is to estimate the demand for constrcution in the near future in developed countires in terms of the consumption of cement. Cement is the material that is indispensable for concrete, which is one of the most important construction materials. The author has already proposed the amount of consumption of cement as the demand for construction. However, the potential for the demand for concrete and cement is different in each country and the current annual consumption of cement ranged from 200 to 700 kg per capita in the developed countries. The author defined the ratio of current annual consumption of cement to the accumulated consumption as the annual increasing rate of concrete in each area. That can be equivalent to the ratio of the amount of newly constructed structure to the amount of existing structures. The current annual increasing rate of concrete in the developed countires ranged from 1.3 to 2.3 per cent and the gap is smaller than the amount of consumption itself per capita. It seems to have already converged in most of the developed countries. The current annual increasing rate of concrete per capita was alos defined by subtracting the population increasing rate from the annual increasing rate of concrete. The range was from 1.0 to 1.9 per cent, which is smaller than the increasing rate itself.