The New York Times recently published a letter from me responding to a guest essay (op-ed) by Michael Geruso and Dean Spears, with whom I’ve been engaging on the question of pro-natalism. As a colleague who had such a letter published a few years ago observed, this will probably get more readers than any journal article I’ve ever written. The text is over the fold
The authors of this essay argue that a large and growing world population is the path to solving humanity’s pressing problems with examples of innovation in medicine, engineering and science that only “a big world could produce.”
In the world as it stands, this is not true. Hundreds of millions of children, particularly girls in poor countries, miss out on the basic education needed to have any chance of realizing their potential. Even in rich countries, access to the university education needed to become a scientist or an engineer (or, for that matter, an economist) is unavailable to many. The more children we have, the harder the task of educating them.
The central reason for declining birthrates is that, as potential parents, most of us have decided that putting a lot of effort into raising one or two children is better than spreading those efforts over three, four or more. What is true for individual families is true for the world as a whole. Until we have the resources to properly feed and educate all our children, we should not worry that we are having too few.