How to talk intelligently about population “collapse”, fertility and IVF
Elon Musk claims that the world’s population is collapsing because of low birth rates. His words panic many. They do not help us to have an intelligent conversation about population “collapse”, fertility rates, and fertility treatments such as IVF.
With demographic “collapse” will come social strife, political instability, and the requirement to rethink many economic growth models. Civilization itself will collapse! Although he really means that North American civilization will collapse, Musk is convinced that civilization is set to end, not with a bang,
“But with a whimper in adult diapers.”
–Elon Musk
Musk displays all the rhetorical skill of a social media tyro in control of the X formerly known as Twitter. But as a former government official, I am not persuaded. I worked extensively on the core social policy issues in the population collapse “debate” — fertility, family formation, ageing, migration, and mortality. Elon Musk is sounding the alarm with all the false confidence of a tech billionaire donating to his own think tanks who pump up primal fears.
Musk is not alone. The cries of “population collapse” are sounding in many warrens of the political world. The causes of these cries differ wildly. A thousand twisted plants are blooming in the Weird Right of the USA. Malcolm and Simone Collins urge larger family sizes, or else there will be “countries of old people starving to death.”
Wholesome stuff, maybe? But they are Silicon Valley eugenicists. With connections to Peter Thiel, Musk’s fellow tech billionaire, they worry that smart people like them are not breeding enough. They engage in genetic testing of their children and seek to breed America back to its WASP inheritance of superiority.
Other Weird Right luminaries like the progenitor of the unreliable history YouTube channel, Whatifalthist, has jumped on the population crash bandwagon. He blames women for not having enough sex with young men like him. Strange geopolitical analysts, like Peter Zeihan, see demographic collapse everywhere—among the USA’s enemies.
Even sometimes sensible historians like Niall Ferguson have rolled out articles in the business press, saying the risk is real, if not till the 2060s. In any case, it suits Niall and his backers who want to increase cheap labour migration to the USA and to spread fear that China is about to “collapse”.
These alarmists, however, misunderstand the processes of population change. It is not that there are no facts. Declining fertility and population ageing are strongly established historical trends of the last fifty to two-hundred years. But they fail to factor in how populations adapt to change. They cling to old assumptions about how families are formed and how people move around the world.
That is the way with most social panics. There is always some foundation to the alarm, even though the soil is contaminated by fear-mongering and undeclared prejudices that the decadent West will be overrun by the migrating, fertile Rest.
I explained the alarmist case in this YouTube video.
I also shared the more balanced view of the real experts. I explained the ten key messages of the UN World Population Prospects 2024 Revision. You can read the summary and full report here.
To give you immediate reassurance, the UN’s projections for the world population are here. No collapse, any time soon - though certain decline in one group of countries.
I do recommend reading the UN Population Division’s ten key messages (one and a half pages). It is better than the alarmist nonsense that gets so much traction over the internet. Please do share and like my YouTube video to spread a more nuanced, informed view than the irresponsible rhetoric of Musk, Collins and Zeihan.
These reflections were based on my three decades working as a government official on core social policy issues—fertility, family formation, education, workforce programs, health, ageing, migration, and mortality.
It is a bit of a dip of the toe back into the water of domestic policy debates. You can read more of my reflections on the issues of governing in my Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat: Writing on Governing.
In the rest of this post for paid subscribers, I add two footnotes to the discussion of population collapse, based on my experience in government and reading of history.
The history of the ideas of ‘Demographic Transition’
Raising the quality of debate on fertility, IVF, and reproductive issues, including my reflections on a “landmark” review of IVF law, regulation and services I led when I was a government official.
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Thank you for your support as a reader, Jeff. Full subscribers, please read on and enjoy my voiceover of the article.