After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People

"It had the best opening sentence of any nonfiction book I read this year: “In 2012, 146 million children were born. That was more than in any prior year. It was also more than in any year since. Millions fewer will be born this year. The year 2012 may well turn out to be the year in which the most humans were ever born—ever as in ever for as long as humanity exists .” Such a simple and obvious fact but I had not known it before. I had to keep reading. For most of modern history, population growth was a background constant; now we may be entering an era of sustained population decline. Spears and Geruso use that fact to motivate a careful examination of why fertility is falling so broadly, why it has proven so hard to reverse, and why this matters for economic growth, fiscal sustainability, and social vitality. The central concern of the book is the ‘spike’ of population growth that has defined the past century—and the steep, possibly irreversible decline in birth rates now unfolding around the world. Spears and Geruso explain why this shift is happening, what the consequences are likely to be, and what might be done to stabilize global population levels. They make the case not only for why the trend matters, but also why we should want more people in the future, not fewer. One of the striking intellectual reversals over the past fifty years has been the shift from fears of overpopulation to concerns about underpopulation. Importantly, both perspectives can be valid: a fertility rate of 7 is clearly too high, but a rate of 1 may well be too low. The surprising reality is how rapid, widespread, and so far unreversed the fertility decline has been—posing significant challenges for economic growth, fiscal stability, and societal dynamism. Meanwhile, many of the dire Malthusian predictions from the 1970s have proven deeply misguided, if not outright false. A substantial part of the book is devoted to rebutting popular arguments against population growth, some of which echo 1970s-era anxieties—such as the belief that more people inevitably mean more climate harm. Spears and Geruso challenge these ideas with empirical evidence and logical clarity. They also advance affirmative arguments for larger populations, ranging from economic benefits tied to innovation and productivity to moral claims about the value of human life and flourishing. The book concludes with a candid discussion of the limitations of current policies and the need for more ambitious thinking. While it doesn’t offer a single ‘solution’ to the population decline, After the Spike succeeds in what is arguably more important at this stage: raising awareness, reframing the conversation, and laying the intellectual groundwork for collective action. Problems of this scale are rarely solved quickly—but they are never solved at all unless people begin thinking and talking seriously about them. This book is a vital contribution to that process."