2025-01-02
34 分钟I'm Dan Kurtz-Valen and this is the Foreign Affairs Interview.
It seems to me there are a lot that human beings and their governments and civil institutions can do to adjust to shrinking and aging populations just the way we adjusted to a growing world when we have a population explosion.
Over the past century, the world's population has exploded,
surging from around 1.6 billion people in 1900 to roughly 8 billion today.
But according to the political economist Nicholas Eberstadt, that chapter of human history is over,
and a new era, which he calls the Age of Depopulation, has begun.
In a recent essay for Foreign Affairs,
Eberstadt argued that plummeting fertility rates everywhere from the United States and Europe to India and China point to a new demographic order.
one that will transform societies, economies, and geopolitics.
Senior Editor Kanishk Tharoor spoke with Eberstadt about what is driving today's population decline,
why policy cannot reverse it, and how governments can reckon with a shrinking world.
Nick, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast.
Well, thank you for inviting me.
You wrote in our recent issue what is nothing short of a monumental piece titled The Age of Depopulation Surviving a World Gone Gray.
And in this piece you make the case that due to the collapse of fertility rates around the world,
the world's population is going to begin shrinking.
Now, some estimates place that happening as soon as 2053,
some in the 2070s or the 2080s, but whenever it might be, it seems to be inevitable.
And when this does happen,
it'll be the first time that the world's population has shrunk