This is an in-depth review, published in the London Review of Books (www.lrb.co.uk) on 20 November 2025, of the following three recently published books:
- After the Spike: The Risks of Global Depopulation and the Case for People, by Dean Spears and Michael Geruso, Bodley Head.
- No One Left: Why the World Needs More Children, by Paul Morland, Swift.
- The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire: Why Our Species is on the Edge of Extinction, by Henry Gee, Picador.
In his review, David Runciman responds to the following concerns:
(1) a risk of global de-population,
(2) why the world needs more children, and
(3) the decline and fall of the human empire.
“He starts off pointing out that people are living longer than they used to and are also having fewer children. The evidence of what this combination can do to a society is growing around the world, Runciman says, with some of the most striking stories coming from Japan. For decades, the Japanese health ministry has released an annual tally of citizens aged one hundred or over. This year the number of centenarians reached very nearly a hundred thousand. When the survey started in 1963, there were just 153. In 1981, there were a thousand; in 1998 ten thousand.
“Japan now produces more nappies for incontinent adults than for infants. There is a burgeoning industry for the cleaning and fumigating of apartments in which elderly Japanese citizens have died and been left undiscovered for weeks, months or years. Older people have far fewer younger people to take care of them or even to notice their non-existence. That neglect is a brute function of some simple maths. In 1950, Japan had a Total Fertility Rate (TFR of 4, which represents the average number of children a woman might expect to have in her lifetime. Continued over five generations, that would mean a ratio of 256 great-great-grandchildren to every 16 great-great grandparents. In other words, each hundred-year-old might have 16 direct descendants competing to look after them.
“Today, Japan’s TFR is approaching 1: one child per woman (or one per couple, half a child each). That pattern continued over five generations means that each solitary infant has as many as sixteen great-great-grandparents vying for his or her attention. Within a century, the pyramid of human obligation has been turned on its head.”
“…Today roughly half the countries in the world have a below-replacement TFR, including almost all of the richer nations and some of the poorer ones. In 1950 many countries had a TFR of 6 or higher, including South Korea. Today just about nowhere does. In South Korea the TFR is currently 0.75, which if maintained will result in a rapidly disappearing population. Some parts of Korean society have already begun to embrace this future. The ‘4B’ movement, which emerged on Twitter in the late 2010s, advocates for women to say ‘no’ four times over: no to dating; no to sex with men; no to marriage; no to childbirth.”
“Yet this dramatic turnaround has happened in a world in which the overall population is rising and will continue to do so for decades to come….”
The article continues at length to describe what each of these books covers in depth and discusses the consequences, e.g. the consequences globally of having fewer children and the consequences globally of climate change.