Population Implosion

A great essay on the Global Baby Bust from the May/June 2004 Foreign Affairs is finally on-line. There are some astonishing statistics about how the world’s population median is shifting dramatically, even in the 3^rd World.

The tone of the article is perhaps too negative. As mentioned in an earlier entry, if the Black Death in Europe could have been the impetus of so much beneficial technological and social change, perhaps a gentler decline in population in the coming years could yield similar effects, without the suffering felt in the 14^th century.

See also the United Nations online World Population Prospects Database. There are a number of ways to explore the data to examine how the population of different regions could change depending on specific assumptions.