Embracing the Birth Dearth Part 2: The Right Stuff

• Nathanial Gronewold
• June 18, 2025
• Forum Papers
• Forum Paper
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An NPG Forum Paper
by Nathanial Gronewold
June 2025

Abstract: Pronatalist policies have failed.

Governments worldwide have spent huge sums of money to persuade, compel, cajole, or even trick couples into producing more humans (for those same governments, of course). They’ve tried cash grants, huge tax deductions, generous maternal and paternal leave policies, flexible work arrangements, subsidized daycare, and more. They’ve also tried banning abortion, suppressing contraception use, and serving up public lectures on the virtues of “traditional” family structures. That hasn’t worked, either. None of it ever will. 

Governments should instead focus on better managing population aging while learning to accept the fact that global birth rates have further to fall. Population decline is inevitable, if far off. Dealing with it means embracing policies that help people live healthier, happier lives as they age while promoting work and pension reforms to attend to the needs of an older population. That’s the right stuff. Pronatalist policies are the wrong approach.

The birth dearth and the population decline it will eventually bring are good things, great things even.

The world doesn’t need more failed pronatalism—it needs pro-aging policies.

AN AGING AND EXPANDING PLANET
Our world is facing an immense problem: far too many people. Way too many. Except you wouldn’t know this from the titles of some recently published books. In “The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire” by Henry Gee, the author warns that our species is “on the edge of extinction.” Oh no.

A few years ago, the author Shamil Ismail put out a book titled “The Age of Decay: How Aging and Shrinking Populations Could Usher in the Decline of Civilization.” That sounds bleak. In 2020, Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson inspired news headlines when their book “Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline” hit the stands. I haven’t read it, but the reviews suggest that the book’s contents are not as dark as that dark, depressing title lets on. Still, “empty planet” is a bit much, don’t you think?

Shocking population decline? An empty planet? The total collapse of civilization? Human extinction? Stirring, frightening stuff; or exciting, depending on your point of view. Except for one pertinent fact: the world’s population is increasing, not decreasing, and unfortunately it looks like it will continue expanding throughout my lifetime. That’s the depressing news.

Trends could change and there is some degree of uncertainty in official projections, but  contemporary investment banks, and independent researchers say the world’s human population—now standing at more than 8 billion people—will peak at somewhere between 9.5 billion and 10.4 billion sometime in the mid-2080s. That’s about 60 years from now. I’m in relatively good shape today, but I don’t think I’ll live long enough to see us reach peak human population.

Looking just at the UN’s figures, the world body sees the population ballooning to 9.7 billion by 2050 (25 years from now) and reaching a peak of 10.4 billion by mid-2080 before gradually drifting back down to the 10.3 billion range by 2100.1 Thus, I’ll have to take extra vitamins and supplements, exercise appropriately, eat lots of healthy food, and lean heavily on advancing healthcare technology so that I may live an extra 75 years just to experience what it’s like to see the human population fall from 10.4 billion to 10.3 billion, according to the UN. That’s still 2.3 billion more people than who are living on the planet today, and honestly, no one’s going to notice humanity gradually contracting from 10.4 billion to 10.3 billion people over 15 years… Continue reading the full Forum paper by clicking here.