A Structural Framework for Understanding Demand Collapse in Aging, Automated Societies

This framework shows that digital self‑service capability is preserved within cohorts and does not decline with age. As a result, demand for assisted services collapses stepwise when cohorts change, not when individuals grow older. Age‑based models systematically mispredict these transitions, creating persistent forecast errors and amplifying institutional blind spots. Crises that appear sudden—bank branch closures, call‑center downsizing, service‑point consolidation—are not shocks but structural cohort‑threshold effects that legacy models cannot detect.