Over the past century, the world’s population has exploded—surging from around one and a half billion people in 1900 to roughly eight billion today. But according to the political economist Nicholas Eberstadt, that chapter of human history is over, and a new era, which he calls the age of depopulation, has begun. 

Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute and has written extensively on demographics, economic development, and international security. In a recent essay for Foreign Affairs, Eberstadt argued that plummeting fertility rates everywhere from the United States and Europe to India and China point to a new demographic order—one that will transform societies, economies, and geopolitics.

Eberstadt spoke with senior editor Kanishk Tharoor about what is driving today’s population decline, why policy cannot reverse it, and how governments can reckon with a shrinking world.

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