In the United States and many other Western countries, the decision to have children or not is sometimes framed as a political affiliation: You’re either in league with conservative pronatalists, or you’re making the ultimate personal sacrifice to reduce your carbon footprint. But the declining global birth rate is a fact that defies politics. Dean Spears, a co-author of the new book After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People, hopes to start a conversation about what a depopulated future might look like, why we should try to avoid it, and how to make the case for more people without undoing social progress.

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