In the past, declines in human population could be attributed to pandemics, wars, or natural disasters. Today,  we are facing an entirely new and different phenomenon. People do not want to have children. Despite great improvements in global health and wealth, fertility rates across much of the world have fallen below replacement levels. We are now marching toward a global pattern of massive population contraction, insufficient to sustain a stable global demographic.

 

As such, societies are growing older, families are becoming smaller, and fewer young people are choosing—or finding themselves able—to marry and have children.  Profound and far-reaching effects on economies, social systems, and the future of societies are anticipated. We are on a march - apparently unstoppable - to planetary population implosion.  

Why is this happening? The answers are more complicated than economics alone. The decline in fertility raises fundamental questions about marriage and family, work and ambition, technology and reproduction, changing relationships between men and women, and the meaning we attach to parenthood itself. It may also reveal something deeper about how contemporary societies understand sacrifice, dependence, hope, and the future.

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The conference will consider not only why fewer children are being born, but what this extraordinary demographic transformation tells us about who we are, what we value, and whether we still believe the future is worth investing in.