Reading List - Brush up on Demographic Winter
1. What to Expect When No One’s Expecting – Jonathan V. Last (2013) Last says modern life creates the conditions for declining fertility. Although he demonstrates what led us to below replacement fertility, just a generation or two removed from the baby-boom years, Last doesn’t have much hope for the future. A decade ago, when our fertility rate was still above replacement, he saw us going the way of Europe and Japan.
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| What To Expect When No One's Expecting |
2. The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity And What to Do About It – Phillip Longman (2004) One of the first books on what’s come to be called Demographic Winter, and one of the best. Longman says responsible parents are investing in the next generation of workers and taxpayers, while society as a whole -- including the childless -- reaps the benefits. (“We have placed a very high tax on responsible parents and other nurturers of human capital and used the proceeds to support the consumption of the population as a whole.”) Among other solutions, he recommends a tax code that recognizes the contributions of families.
3. The Ultimate Resource – Julian Simon (1996) While there’s no direct discussion of fertility, futurist Simon shows how people are the one essential resource. Simon had a famous bet with neo-Malthusian Paul Ehrlich on whether a rising population would lead to the depletion of natural resources. Naturally, Ehrlich said it would. Simon said more people would lead to new discoveries of oil and mineral deposits, and new ways to use what we have more efficiently, and better methods of farming. Simon won the bet.
4. The Children of Men – by P.D. James (1992) What is it like to live in a world without children – a world in which humanity has no future? This novel by British author P.D. James gives us a glimpse of such a world. It’s set in Britain 25 years after the last child was born on earth, due to a worldwide plague of infertility. Workers who are practically slaves are imported from the Third World and sent home when they’re no longer useful. There are life-sized dolls to satisfy maternal instincts. Suicide of the elderly is encouraged (so few are available to care for them). Everyone is forced to live with the knowledge that the world of man will end in a matter of years “The Children of Men” is both tragic and hopeful. It’s also a speeded-up version of where Demographic Winter is taking us, as falling fertility becomes population decline which leads to population free-fall. James helps to puncture the myth of overpopulation by showing us the opposite, which is fast becoming a reality.
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