Will Nothing Stop the Incredible Global Birth Crash?

Human beings are unique among living creatures in being able to alter their own fertility deliberately, imposing their own constantly changing choices and preferences on childbearing. We are now watching a revolutionary transformation of human birth choices play out around the world in a way that only science fiction writers could have imagined even a generation ago. Humanity is in the midst of a headlong global birth crash—a plunge underway all around the world, in rich and poor regions alike, very possibly presaging an indefinite global depopulation, with our “peak human” moment coming shockingly soon. For many decades, demographers assumed...