Empty Planet

The Shock of Global Population Decline

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Empty Planet

By: Darrell Bricker, John Ibbitson

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

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£5.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends on 5 July 2026 at 11:59 BST. Cancel monthly.

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**A SUNDAY TIMES MUST-READ**

'Riveting and vitally important' - Steven Pinker
'A gripping narrative of a world on the cusp of profound change' - Anjana Ahuja, New Statesman

Empty Planet offers a radical, provocative argument that the global population will soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, political and economic landscape.

For half a century, statisticians, pundits and politicians have warned that a burgeoning planetary population will soon overwhelm the earth's resources. But a growing number of experts are sounding a different kind of alarm. Rather than growing exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline.

Throughout history, depopulation was the product of catastrophe: ice ages, plagues, the collapse of civilizations. This time, however, we're thinning ourselves deliberately, by choosing to have fewer babies than we need to replace ourselves. In much of the developed and developing world, that decline is already underway, as urbanisation, women's empowerment, and waning religiosity lead to smaller and smaller families. In Empty Planet, Ibbitson and Bricker travel from South Florida to Sao Paulo, Seoul to Nairobi, Brussels to Delhi to Beijing, drawing on a wealth of research and firsthand reporting to illustrate the dramatic consequences of this population decline - and to show us why the rest of the developing world will soon join in.

They find that a smaller global population will bring with it a number of benefits: fewer workers will command higher wages; good jobs will prompt innovation; the environment will improve; the risk of famine will wane; and falling birthrates in the developing world will bring greater affluence and autonomy for women. But enormous disruption lies ahead, too. We can already see the effects in Europe and parts of Asia, as aging populations and worker shortages weaken the economy and impose crippling demands on healthcare and vital social services. There may be earth-shaking implications on a geopolitical scale as well.

Empty Planet is a hugely important book for our times. Captivating and persuasive, it is a story about urbanisation, access to education and the empowerment of women to choose their own destinies. It is about the secularisation of societies and the vital role that immigration has to play in our futures.

Rigorously researched and deeply compelling, Empty Planet offers a vision of a future that we can no longer prevent - but that we can shape, if we choose to.©2019 Darrell Bricker

Darrell BrickerJohn IbbitsonRobert PetkoffLittle, Brown Book Group

Anthropology

Emigration & Immigration

Politics & Government

Social Sciences

United States

World

Africa

Imperialism

China

Capitalism

Latin American

Socialism

Taxation

Social justice

Imperial Japan

Anthropology Emigration & Immigration Politics & Government Social Sciences United States World Africa Imperialism China Capitalism Latin American Socialism Taxation Social justice Imperial Japan

Critic reviews

A fascinating study (David Goodhart)

A bold thesis, but the authors are convincing . . . this briskly readable book demands urgent attention (Sarah Ditum)

The "everything you know is wrong" genre has become tedious, but this book is riveting and vitally important. With eye-opening data and lively writing, Bricker and Ibbitson show that the world is radically changing in a way that few people appreciate (Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now)

[Bricker and Ibbitson] have written a sparkling and enlightening guide to the contemporary world of fertility as small family sizes and plunging rates of child-bearing go global. (Paul Morland)

Bricker and Ibbitson work their way around the globe in pacey, sometimes breathless journalistic prose, although their argument is refreshingly clear and well balanced . . . (Robert Mayhew)

The authors combine a mastery of social-science research with enough journalistic flair to convince fair-minded readers of a simple fact: fertility is falling faster than most experts can readily explain, driven by persistent forces . . . Empty Planet succeeds as a long-overdue skewering of population-explosion fearmongers (Lyman Stone)

A highly readable, controversial insight into a world rarely thought about - a world of depopulation under ubiquitous urbanisation (George Magnus, author of The Age of Aging and Red Flags: Why Xi's China is in Jeopardy)

While the global population is swelling well over 7.5 billion people today, birth rates have nonetheless already begun dropping around the world. Past population declines have historically been driven by natural disasters or disease - the Toba supervolcano, Black Death or Spanish Flu - but this coming slump will be of our own demographic making. In this fascinating and thought-provoking book, Bricker and Ibbitson compellingly argue why by the end of this century the problem won't be overpopulation but a rapidly shrinking global populace, and how we might have to adapt (Professor Lewis Dartnell, author of The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch)

To get the future right we must challenge our assumptions, and the biggest assumption so many of us make is that populations will keep growing. Bricker and Ibbitson deliver a mind-opening challenge that should be taken seriously by anyone who cares about the long-term future - which, I hope, is all of us (Dan Gardner, author of Risk and co-author of Superforecasting)

Thanks to the authors' painstaking fact-finding and cogent analysis, [Empty Planet] offers ample and persuasive arguments for a re-evaluation of conventional wisdom

Most relevant

I can't say that I loved this audiobook or will I believe their central Theory / prediction as obviously an awful Lot of the subject matter is only the opinion of 2 men (based on their own research etc ..et al). However as this was written and released before the 2020 Covid Crisis as well as the invasion of Ukraine etc i will go so far as to say that maybe they could have a point here regards future world Population reductions, as Nowadays, I feel young people especially are getting really Nervous about their futures on this Planet and what Life will be like in another 30 to 50 years time, and what kind of a World will they want to bring their own children into..what with future food shortages, new viruses, wars over water rights and All the uncertainty that Climate change well bring. I would welcome and updated version to this book which starts with the last chapter in this book, finishes [What Lies Ahead} and commences with new threats such as Youth Social Anxiety as to what is coming down the line (& into Our shared future...)