Falling birth rates across nearly all the developed world – and now much of the developing world – have demographers like Paul Morland concerned. While the planet as a whole is projected to be home to 9.8 billion people by 2050 – up from 7.96 billion today – a vast number of countries, from within Europe to South-East Asia to the Americas, are dealing with decades of sub-replacement fertility, which means a total fertility rate (TFR) below the 2.1 required for a woman to replace herself and her partner.

Australia, for example, has not had a fertility rate above 2.1 since 1976, and without generations of immigration, would have a much smaller, less diverse – and somewhat older – population than it enjoys today.

In his new book, Tomorrow’s People: The Future of Humanity in Ten Numbers, Morland, an academic visitor at St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, reveals how changing population dynamics will help determine prosperity, the balance of power between nations, and the mass movement of peoples in coming decades. While there’s a popular belief that low fertility is limited to a handful of countries such as Japan (with a TFR of 1.4), Singapore (1.1), Taiwan (1.2) and Italy (1.3), declining birth rates are now more the rule than the exception across vast areas of the globe.

Morland, a father of three adult children, insists we are now living through what’s being called a “demographic transition”.

Read more @The Sydney Morning Herald