Depopulation Bomb: Why Are Birth Rates Falling Across the Globe?

In 1968, Paul and Anne Ehrlich published a best-seller, “The Population Bomb,” predicting imminent mass starvation due to overpopulation. The situation was so dire, they wrote, that adding “temporary sterilants” to the water could be a solution. At the time, the world’s population was 3.5 billion people. Today it’s over 8 billion—and oddly, we’re having a very different conversation. Elon Musk, by all accounts a very smart man, says the problem today is not too many people—it’s not enough people. That plummeting birth rates across the globe poses a civilizational threat. And if people don’t start having a lot of babies soon, civilization will crumble....