The Depopulation Bomb Isn’t Ticking, It’s Overblown
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In the 1960s and 70s, as the global population was growing by leaps and bounds, prominent intellectuals, institutions, and political leaders, from the United Nations, to the Club of Rome, to President Richard Nixon, warned about the looming crisis of overpopulation. Today, with birth rates falling around the world, a growing number of thought leaders foretell the precise opposite.
Sharing a stage with Chinese business magnate Jack Ma, Elon Musk said, “the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years is population collapse.” Ma heartily agreed, calling the “population problem” a “huge challenge.” They aren’t alone. These sentiments are echoed, with varying degrees of grandiosity, by Silicon Valley tycoons like Peter Thiel, right-wing populists like J.D. Vance and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, conservatives like Niall Ferguson, and religious leaders like Pope Francis. And it’s not just folks on the political right. Non-partisan think tanks like the Centre for International Governance Innovation host conferences with titles like “Empty Planet: Preparing for the Global Population Decline.” Prestigious journals like The Lancet publish research with headlines such as “Dramatic declines in global fertility rates set to transform global population patterns by 2100.” The New York Times runs editorials trying to reframe population growth as a progressive issue. Put simply, concerns over a coming population collapse are, unlike young people, mounting.
This raises two important questions. How sure are we about a future population crash, and would a decline in the population necessarily be a disaster for humanity? On both scores, there is ample reason to be skeptical.
