Have I had too many babies, or not enough?

November 12, 2007 7:10 AM

Help me remember (or find) some books on birthrates and population decline.

A couple of years ago, I read two or three books on the subject of declining birthrates and their effect on human populations and economies in the coming years. I can't find either of those books again, not on Amazon, not by googling, not in my own book lists. Apparently whatever keyword applies, I'm not coming up with it. I'd like to have the titles because it comes up so often (really, surprisingly often) that people say something that assumes human population is still and will always be increasing exponentially, and I'd like to be able to say, "Actually, there are other views on that. An interesting book on the subject is...."

Anybody know what books I'm thinking of? Or books I'm not thinking of that fit the bill?

posted by not that girl to science & nature (4 comments total)

OK, wasted that question...on an impulse, I googled one more time, and found the books I was looking for on a list. The two I read before were The Empty Cradle by Philip Longman and Fewer by Ben Wattenberg.

Sigh.

Would still be interested in others, though.
posted by not that girl at 7:27 AM on November 12, 2007

I don't know of any books, but it is a commonly accepted fact in development theory that country's birth rates will decrease as economic opportunities and women's education increases. If a developing country can manage even an semi-effective primary school system for women, it can almost guarantee on a corresponding decline in population growth.
posted by schroedinger at 7:28 AM on November 12, 2007

And of course lower birth rates play havoc with public pension/social security schemes, if you get into territory where you have fewer current workers funding more retirees - there's been a lot written about the consequences of shifting demographics for welfare economics. "Global aging" is a good keyword; this guy http://www.ceda.berkeley.edu/papers/rlee/ has done some of the work on this.
posted by yarrow at 8:40 AM on November 12, 2007

One term for you to search for is "negative population growth". Such as this About.com article about countries with declining populations (according to which most of western Europe will lose between 1/20 and 1/3 (!!!) of it's population by 2050).
posted by anaelith at 9:48 AM on November 12, 2007