WTH is Going On With the World’s Looming Depopulation Crisis? Nicholas Eberstadt Explains

For the first time since the Black Death in the 1300s, the world
is heading towards an era of depopulation. And for the first time
in human history, this era of depopulation will be by choice. All
over the world, women are choosing to have fewer and fewer
children even as medical advances continue to prolong life. The
result will be that people born today will live in graying
societies in which the elderly and retired vastly outnumber the
young and employed who are critical in supporting older
generations. Why are people around the world choosing to have
fewer children? And what do graying societies mean for the global
economy?


Nicholas Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy
at the American Enterprise Institute where he researched
demographics, economic development, and international security in
the Korean peninsula and Asia. He is also a senior advisor to the
National Bureau of Asian Research, a founding board member of the
US Committee on Human Rights in North Korea, and has served as a
consultant or adviser to the US Government and international
organizations. His most recent book is the Post-Pandemic Edition
of Men Without Work (Templeton, 2022).


Read the transcript here.


Read Eberstadt's Foreign Affairs article here.


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