Interview: US Decline Ahead Without More Babies, Author Says

The United States is facing a crisis due to its falling fertility rate, author Jonathan Last argues in What to Expect When No One's Expecting: America's Coming Demographic Disaster.

The myth that the world is overpopulated and disasters will ensue as a result was popularized in Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book, The Population Bomb. The myth remains popular today even as Ehrlich's predictions turned out to be wildly off the mark. Not only was he wrong about mass starvation by the end of the 1970s, notes Last, a senior writer at The Weekly Standard, but he was wrong at exactly the time that fertility rates began a steep drop in the U.S. and across the world.

Last cites studies showing that nations with a growing population, those with "total fertility rate" (TFR) greater than 2.1 babies born per female over the course of her life, flourish, while nations with a TFR lower than 2.1 decline. High fertility nations flourish because they invest in their young and have higher rates of innovation. In low fertility nations, on the other hand, resources shift to caring for the elderly and fewer workers must work to pay for increased health care costs. Read more