This paper addresses the prospect of global depopulation and its far-reaching implications. The author argues that the advent of world population decline may come sooner than commonly anticipated, due to remarkable drops in birth rates underway in low-income regions as well as in developed countries. Notwithstanding uncertainties about the precise level of planetary fertility (due mainly to limited statistical information from Africa), it is clear that overall childbearing patterns for the human species are at most only slightly above the replacement level today—and might already actually have fallen below that significant threshold. Prolonged sub-replacement fertility will have far-reaching social, economic, and political ramifications, the specifics of which are discussed in the paper. For example, the most important working age population, those from 15-39 years of age, will probably start declining in 2027, annual deaths will likely exceed annual births, the over-65 population will double to 1.5 billion between now and 2050. The author also speculates on the important role of immigration in this new context. ”Depopulating societies that fail to attract and assimilate talent from abroad will be at growing comparative disadvantage.”
World Depopulation: Prospects and Implications,
American Enterprise Institute, December 2024, 29 pp.
Author: Nicholas Eberstadt