**A SUNDAY TIMES MUST-READ** 'Riveting and vitally important' -
Steven Pinker 'A gripping narrative of a world on the cusp of
profound change' - Anjana Ahuja, New Statesman Empty Planet offers
a radical, provocative argument that the global population will
soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, political
and economic landscape. For half a century, statisticians, pundits
and politicians have warned that a burgeoning planetary population
will soon overwhelm the earth's resources. But a growing number of
experts are sounding a different kind of alarm. Rather than growing
exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a
steep decline. 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. In much of
the developed and developing world, that decline is already
underway, as urbanisation, women's empowerment, and waning
religiosity lead to smaller and smaller families. In Empty Planet,
Ibbitson and Bricker travel from South Florida to Sao Paulo, Seoul
to Nairobi, Brussels to Delhi to Beijing, drawing on a wealth of
research and firsthand reporting to illustrate the dramatic
consequences of this population decline - and to show us why the
rest of the developing world will soon join in. They find that a
smaller global population will bring with it a number of benefits:
fewer workers will command higher wages; good jobs will prompt
innovation; the environment 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, too. We can already see the effects in Europe and parts
of Asia, as aging populations and worker shortages weaken the
economy and impose crippling demands on healthcare and vital social
services. There may be earth-shaking implications on a geopolitical
scale as well. Empty Planet is a hugely important book for our
times. Captivating and persuasive, it is a story about
urbanisation, access to education and the empowerment of women to
choose their own destinies. It is about the secularisation of
societies and the vital role that immigration has to play in our
futures. Rigorously researched and deeply compelling, Empty Planet
offers a vision of a future that we can no longer prevent - but
that we can shape, if we choose to.
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