Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline

From the authors of the bestsellingThe Big Shift, a groundbreaking examination of global population decline--a prediction completely at odds with United Nations surveys--and how it will effect all of us in the not-so-distant future.For half a century, statisticians, pundits, and politicians have warned that a burgeoning planetary population is threatening to overwhelm the earth's resources. They are wrong. Exactly the opposite will soon be upon us.Somewhere around 2050, perhaps sooner, the population of the earth will begin to decline, and that decline will never stop. In much of the developed and developing world, decline is already underway. The big news is that the rest of the developing world will soon join in. Throughout history, depopulation was the product of catastrophe: ice ages, plagues, the collapse of civilizations. This time, however, we're thinning ourselves deliberately, by choosing to have fewer babies than we need to replace ourselves.Empty Planetsurveys the traumatic impact of the single most important event in modern history: manufactured infertility. The authors have travelled to six continents--Canberra to Sao Paolo; Seoul to Nairobi; Brussels to Delhi to Beijing--interviewing both leading experts and families who are living the reality of a shrinking planet. Some believe that fewer people will be an unmixed blessing. They're wrong. We can already see the effects in Europe and parts of Asia: aging societies, stagnant economies, crippling demands on government services with too few workers available to care for all the old, sick people in their midst. Not all the news is bad: fewer workers will command higher wages; jobs will prompt innovation; the atmosphere will improve, the risk of famine will wane; and falling birthrates in the developing world will bring greater affluence and autonomy for women. But enormous disruption lies ahead.Empty Planetwill show the world its future, a future that we can no longer prevent, but one we can shape, if we choose.