Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline | Book Review
What if, instead of a suffocatingly overcrowded world, the future of humanity is actually defined by a steep loss of population? Not a genocide, epidemic, nuclear war, or meteor strike that reduces our numbers, but rather a shift in economics and quality of life that causes us to have fewer or no children. That is what Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson propose is already taking place in many nations around the world, including the likes of Hungary and Japan, and which they believe will become common in developed and even developing nations in the years ahead. They make a compelling case for this in ‘Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline.’
The authors did their homework, not only digging through census data, demographic studies, and historical records, but also going to places like Korea, India, and Brazil to speak with people — women, in particular — about their experiences and motivations with marriage and family planning decisions. They manage to weave a cohesive story around these vignettes tied in with the results of their research, one that is so engaging I could barely bring myself to put the book down until I finished.
You might think that population reduction is a great thing, and to a certain extent it can be, but Bricker and Ibbitson explain that there is a definite down side to not at least maintaining a population. With fewer producers and consumers, the economy is weakened, and without sufficient young people paying taxes, old-age benefits become unsustainable. Some nations that are already shrinking through attrition, like Hungary and Japan, also tend to be unwelcoming or even hostile to immigrants, making their situation all the more precarious. The United States and Canada are cited as examples of immigrant societies that can remain healthy long term, so long as they don’t deviate from their historic acceptance of newcomers. As we know, nativist sentiment is strong in certain sectors of the US right now, despite historic lows in migration. In fact, people have been moving from the US back to their home countries in large numbers since 2008.
“Remigration will be an increasing phenomenon in the years ahead, as immigrants are tempted to return whence they came, back to their family and their people and proper food. Developed countries in need of migrants to sustain their populations should be doing everything in their power to keep them. Instead, they have become increasingly hostile to newcomers, which is a highly self-defeating attitude.” (pg 149)
A moment of introspection came to me when the authors pointed out the flaw in how people on the left generally respond to such attitudes.
“But the blame for this sorry state lies not only with the populist, nativist nationalists on the right. Defenders of immigration on the left contribute too, by characterizing immigration as a test of personal compassion and tolerance. To oppose immigration, for them, is to be selfish at best and racist at worst. People do not respond well to such insults. They tend to lash out at their accusers, damning them as out-of-touch elites, and then voting for the politician they think will have their back. What sensible politicians of both the left and the right need to explain is that accepting immigrants isn’t a question of compassion and tolerance. It’s good for business. It grows the economy. It increases the tax base. People are much more easily moved to act in their own selfish interests than to sacrifice for the sake of others.” (pg 152)
While I’m certain that racism is behind a great deal of the anti-immigrant rhetoric of our time, calling it out as such in every case is counterproductive. It is reasonable to want immigrants, because the economy isn’t a static pie that people take slices from, but rather value in the form of products and services that human action generates through creativity and labor. This goes to the roots of how I have long understood economics, and I think I’d be doing myself a favor to get back into that mindset, while also making the moral case for immigration and welcoming refugees.
There are parts of this book that I’m certain will receive criticism, including where the authors talk about the conditions of black people in the United States having improved. Also they go to pains to clarify that the situation remains unacceptable, with systemic racism and poverty, I’m afraid a lot of people will get caught up thinking they’re minimizing the problem. This is something I’ve seen happen with the work of Steven Pinker, who has argued using data and statistics that human progress is real, and that general quality of life now is better than ever in human history. He unfortunately acts a bit too dismissive about particular cases of human misery, so focused he is on the big picture, that he’s been accused of painting a rosy picture that undermines social justice efforts.
Honestly, yes there will be some who will hate that this book utilizes data that appear to minimize the struggles of refugees and others. That would be missing the point. Of course there are very real problems that must be addressed, something that the authors are emphatic about. Just because some things are better now doesn’t mean the status quo is acceptable. Personally, that’s why I support organizations like SOIL Haiti. So long as injustice exists anywhere, we can’t rest.
This book is surprisingly fluid for having two people collaborating to write it, and it is an encouraging, engaging page turner that also provides realistic cautions for the path ahead. ‘Empty Planet’ is definitely worth a careful, considered read.
