Global Birth Rate Drop Will Produce Economic Decline

The U.N.’s big biennial World Population Prospects is out with news that contradicts nearly 60 years of progressive orthodoxy. The real planetary threat is not too many people but too few: a looming drop in the birth rate that will usher in a long period of economic decline.

The WPP predicts that the global population will peak in the mid-2080s at around 10.3 billion before gradually shrinking to about 10.2 billion by the end of the century. But that’s the best-case scenario. Citing demographers working outside the centripetal force of the U.N., The Atlantic’s Marc Novikoff concludes: “Humanity won’t start to shrink in 2084. It will start to shrink in 2055, if not sooner. If the birth rate continues to drop around the world at its current pace, economic growth and workers’ retirement prospects will go the way of those projections: adjusting every few years to a smaller, sadder, poorer future.”

About the Author

Will Swaim

Will Swaim is the CEO of the California Policy Center and, with David L. Bahnsen, a co-host of National Review’s Radio Free California podcast.

Featured Tags

Manage following

Family

The U.N.’s big biennial World Population Prospects is out with news that contradicts nearly 60 years of progressive orthodoxy. The real planetary threat is not too many people but too few: a looming drop in the birth rate that will usher in a long period of economic decline.

The WPP predicts that the global population will peak in the mid-2080s at around 10.3 billion before gradually shrinking to about 10.2 billion by the end of the century. But that’s the best-case scenario. Citing demographers working outside the centripetal force of the U.N., The Atlantic’s Marc Novikoff concludes: “Humanity won’t start to shrink in 2084. It will start to shrink in 2055, if not sooner. If the birth rate continues to drop around the world at its current pace, economic growth and workers’ retirement prospects will go the way of those projections: adjusting every few years to a smaller, sadder, poorer future.”