WTH is Going On With the World’s Looming Depopulation Crisis? Nicholas Eberstadt Explains
What the Hell Is Going On
AEI Podcasts
4.4 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2024
⏱️ 54 minutes
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Summary
For the first time since the Black Death in the 1300s, the world is heading towards an era of depopulation. And for the first time in human history, this era of depopulation will be by choice. All over the world, women are choosing to have fewer and fewer children even as medical advances continue to prolong life. The result will be that people born today will live in graying societies in which the elderly and retired vastly outnumber the young and employed who are critical in supporting older generations. Why are people around the world choosing to have fewer children? And what do graying societies mean for the global economy?
Nicholas Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute where he researched demographics, economic development, and international security in the Korean peninsula and Asia. He is also a senior advisor to the National Bureau of Asian Research, a founding board member of the US Committee on Human Rights in North Korea, and has served as a consultant or adviser to the US Government and international organizations. His most recent book is the Post-Pandemic Edition of Men Without Work (Templeton, 2022).
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Read Eberstadt's Foreign Affairs article here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:03.0 | If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell he's talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on? |
| 0:01.1 | Who in God's name knows what it's all about. |
| 0:29.2 | Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka. |
| 0:31.1 | And I'm Mark Tiesin. |
| 0:32.2 | Welcome to our podcast. |
| 0:33.6 | What the hell is going on? |
| 0:36.3 | Mark, what are we giving thanks for this week? |
| 0:38.7 | We are giving thanks for the fact that America is prosperous and American greatness is coming back, |
| 0:44.4 | despite the fact that our population and the global population is beginning to plummet. |
| 0:50.9 | We are heading towards, as our friend Nick Ebersstadt has pointed out, for the first |
| 0:55.9 | time since the Black Death in the 1300s, the world is heading for an era of depopulation. |
| 1:02.8 | And this time, for the first time, it's happening not because of some sort of catastrophe, |
| 1:07.4 | like a plague or that, where it's being driven by choices that people are making. People are |
| 1:14.1 | choosing not to have children. And, you know, it's interesting because we're going into depopulation. |
| 1:19.7 | There's this new trend on the left for when we don't get into this sort of conversation with |
| 1:24.4 | Nick Eberstadt, who's our guest today, but we probably should have. There's this new trend on the left calling for degrowth, right? That, you know, economic |
| 1:32.0 | growth, we've always taken it as a net positive, right? Growing economy, more jobs, more opportunity, |
| 1:36.8 | more wealth, more prosperity. And some people on the left are saying, maybe we should go into an |
| 1:40.9 | era of degrowth because the climate is, you know, is going to |
| 1:44.8 | destroy the planet and, you know, growth ain't so good. And the choices people are making in terms |
| 1:50.7 | of fertility, having children, may lead us to degrowth. Yeah, you know, look, I mean, that's true. |
... |
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