Mike Hsu
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Kimberly-Clark
Okay. All right. Thanks for the question. There's a lot in that. I'll try to get to all of it and Nelson and Chris may keep me honest here. Overall, Dara, I'd say I feel very good about our setup for 2025 and also for the long-term. The -- maybe the one external piece I'd say is our categories continue to exhibit very durable growth. The underlying demand is healthy. Our categories continue to expand in both dollars and units or value-end units. And that's because I think we've talked about this before, Dara, we see really three durable drivers of growth over the long-term. And number-one is penetration, which remains an opportunity.
I'd say, hey, the good news is birth rate declines are leveling-off and in some markets, notably Korea, we saw a positive growth rate in the 3rd-quarter, which continued in the fourth and that was the first time in eight years. And in China was positive in growth rate as well. So I'd say one, on penetration, growth rate declines kind of inflecting a bit at least early signs. Our aging population for adult care categories remains a big tailwind, especially in developed markets like South Korea and China, US. And then there remains in much of the developing world an expanding middle-class that remains a big driver for us.
Second big thing, frequency remains strong. There is some pockets of softness, notably, I'd say in pockets of Latin-America and Southeast Asia, but frequency remains robust for us. And then maybe one of our bigger opportunities remains trade-up. Consumers remain very interested in better-performing products and so we're seeing the premium end of our categories continue to grow.
So with all that said, I'd say in the short-term, we're seeing, and I think it was in our prepared remarks, 2% category growth this year, which is on the lower-end of what we said, but I'd still say fairly robust, durable for our categories. The big thing is, our categories are daily essentials. And so they don't move around that much from day-to-day and year-to-year. So I'd say maybe that would be on the shorter-term. And then over the long-term, I think we're positioned well to deliver consistent volume and mix growth over the long-term. I think we believe our growth profile will continue to improve over-time, and that's, as I just mentioned, a function of demographics and income and all the investment we're doing to make our categories and our products and brands better.
Think what we said last March at Investor Day, we expected weighted-average category growth to revert to a historical range of 2% to 3%. And last year through the first-half, we were a little ahead of that. And then after lapping some price moves from the prior year, I'd say we've seen some lower frequency in some markets and a little bit of a slowdown in North-America professional consumption. But overall I think the categories have globally performed pretty well. So I don't -- you know, for this -- for the -- going-forward or for this year, I don't really expect a whole lot of new pricing that will drive that up. And I think as I mentioned, the category we have at two -- around 2% this year and expect longer-term 2% to 3% volume mix-driven, I think is a reasonable aspiration for us or for what the category is going to do and then we want to grow faster than that. So I'll pause there. I know there's a lot to your question. I just gave you a lot. Which other things did I miss?
