The World Is Running Out of People

Consider this: by the end of the century, Japan — currently home to 123 million people — may shrink to just 63 million. That’s not a projection from a dystopian novel. That’s the consensus view from demographers who study nothing but the numbers, stripped of political sentiment or wishful thinking.

Or consider South Korea, where women today have an average of 0.75 children. Not 1.75. Not 0.975. Zero point seven five. When you run that through a simple population calculator, you get ...