The Coming Population Crash: And Our Planet's Surprising Future

Demography is destiny. It underlies many of the issues that shake the world, from war and economics to immigration. No wonder, then, that overpopulation fears flared regularly over the last century, which saw world population quadruple. Even today, baby booms in the developing world are regularly blamed for genocide and terrorism. And overpopulation is cited as the most important environmental issue.

Yet, surprisingly, it appears that the explosion is past its peak: half the world’s women are now having two children or fewer—in developing countries as well as in rich ones. If you are under forty-five, you will almost certainly live to see a world population that is declining for the first time since the Black Death, almost seven hundred years ago.

Chronicling first the troubling history of efforts to contain the demographic explosion, from the early environmental movement’s racism and involvement in eugenics, to coercive family-planning policies in China and India, Pearce charts the demographic path of our species over two hundred years. And then he dives into the environmental, social, and economic effects of our surprising demographic future: a shrinking, graying population; mass migrations; and, just maybe, a wiser world.