No One Left

A population calamity is unfolding before our eyes. It started in parts of the developed world and is spreading to the four corners of the globe. There are just too few babies being born for humanity to replace itself. Leading demographer Paul Morland argues that the consequences of this promise to be calamitous. Labour shortages, pensions crises, ballooning debt: what is currently happening in South Korea - which faces population decline of more than 85% within just two generations - threatens to engulf us all, and sooner than we think. In the developed world we may be able temporarily to stave off the worst of its effects with immigration, but many countries, including those the immigrants come from, will get old before they get rich. No One Left charts this future, explains its causes and suggests what might be done. Unless we radically change our attitudes towards parenthood and embrace a new progressive pro-natalism, argues Morland, we face disaster.

A population calamity is unfolding before our eyes. It started in parts of the developed world and is spreading to the four corners of the globe. There are just too few babies being born for humanity to replace itself. Leading demographer Paul Morland argues that the consequences of this promise to be calamitous. Labour shortages, pensions crises, ballooning debt: what is currently happening in South Korea - which faces population decline of more than 85% within just two generations - threatens to engulf us all, and sooner than we think. In the developed world we may be able temporarily to stave off the worst of its effects with immigration, but many countries, including those the immigrants come from, will get old before they get rich. No One Left charts this future, explains its causes and suggests what might be done. Unless we radically change our attitudes towards parenthood and embrace a new progressive pro-natalism, argues Morland, we face disaster.