Demography

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8:23 AM, May 13, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPER

CBS's Sunday morning show had a piece on couples who choose to be childless. The spot featured an appearance by Jonathan V. Last, author of What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster:

Order Last's book, What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster, here.

9:07 AM, Apr 1, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPER

Nick Gillespie reviews Jonathan V. Last's book, What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster:

12:45 PM, Jan 19, 2013 • By GEOFFREY NORMAN

The conventional wisdom has long held that the world is running out of everything except people of which there is an insupportable and growing surplus. The planet, in short, is doomed by the inevitable over breeding of the human race. Everyone from Thomas Malthus to the Club of Rome agreed on this.

11:55 AM, Jan 5, 2013 • By JONATHAN V. LAST

Just before Christmas there was a lot of public concern about America’s declining birthrate, which closed out 2012 at its lowest point since 1920. But in trying to understand why American fertility is on the wane, it’s important to understand that fertility decline is a global phenomenon. Ninety-seven percent of the world’s population lives in countries with declining fertility rates. And as bad as America has it now, things could be worse. We could be Japan.

7:07 AM, Dec 20, 2012 • By JONATHAN V. LAST

The New York Times has finally discovered that fiscal cliffs aren’t the only thing that menace the modern nation-state. There’s a demographic cliff, too.

10:54 AM, Nov 30, 2012 • By GEOFFREY NORMAN

Times are good in Washington and the political class is enjoying itself enormously in a game where the players see who will dance closest to the edge of a cliff.

10:41 AM, Nov 9, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPER

Megan McArdle offers a few reasons to be skeptical of an "emerging Democratic majority."

The roots of economic collapse start with demographics.

12:16 PM, Oct 25, 2012 • By JONATHAN V. LAST

Let’s tick through three pieces of bad news from the last week.

11:20 AM, Oct 19, 2012 • By JONATHAN V. LAST

Last week, I spent some time talking about demographics and the latest CDC birth numbers. There were a number of interesting aspects to this data, but the big takeaway was that the percentage of first-child births has hit an all-time low. As I said last week, this suggests that we're slowly bifurcating into a society where we have two classes of adults: parents and non-parents.

11:15 AM, Oct 12, 2012 • By JONATHAN V. LAST

It's demographics time again! Last week, the CDC released its preliminary birth data for 2011. Much of the analysis focused on the raw number of births, which declined for the fourth straight year. America's general fertility rate is now the lowest it's ever been. Which is not great news.

Photo of Chinese people lining up to buy train tickets

The perils of population loss.

Apr 23, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 30 • By JONATHAN V. LAST

The world is heading for demographic catastrophe. Fertility rates have been falling across the globe for 40 years, to the point where, today, Israel is the only First World country where women have enough babies to sustain their population. The developing world is heading in the same direction, fast. Only

3 percent of the world’s population live in a country where the fertility rate is not dropping.