A Remade World

For The Weekly Standard, Jonathan V. Last writes a book review of Population Decline and the Remaking of Great Power Politics, edited by Susan Yoshihara and Douglas A. Sylva. It is a compilation of essays about the birth rate crash most of the world is now experiencing.

Demography is amazing stuff. Here are four examples:

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

As populations shrink, economies will sputter. Western countries will struggle to support too many retirees without enough workers, and the rest of the world (particularly places such as China and Russia) will be challenged just to maintain order.

Most people will have neither brothers, sisters, aunts, nor uncles, and there will be no such thing as an extended family.

Over the next 40 years we will witness the most drastic demographic upheaval the world has seen since (at least) the Black Death. And one way, or another, the world will be remade.