Posts tagged global population
Audio Essay: The Demographic Transition

My second audio essay is now up. You can listen and download the file directly here, or alternatively subscribe to ‘Alpha Source Audio Essay’ Apple Podcast channel where my future audio essays will also be published. The link to the episode on Apple podcasts is here.

You can find and download all my economics and demographics essays in written form here , as PDFs. You can find links to all references on the landing page for my demographics work here. I plan on doing once a month of these audio essays, time permitting, on demographics, economics, finance and everything in between.

Read More
Global fertility will soon fall below the replacement level

I am currently writing the third chapter on fertility for my book on demographics—see here— which focuses on on the onset of sub-replacement fertility in one country after the other since the 1970s, what's driving this shift, and whether the decline—to a large extent driven by birth postponement or so-called tempo effects—is reversing or accelerating. It is a treatise on the notion of a second demographic transition, including empirical case studies, and a discussion about whether sub-replacement fertility is something to worry about,  cherish, or perhaps to approach with indifference.  This is an enquiry that is defined just as much by what it excludes as what it includes. Once we dip into the multidisciplinary academic work on demographics which has emerged in the last two-to-three decades, we go from a large literature to an almost unmanageable one. I will hopefully be able to present a first draft on the chapter soon. In the mean time, however, one thing that as struck me during my recent work is that global fertility will soon fall below the replacement level, defined as just over two children per women, despite what the latest UN projections would have you believe.

Read More