Nicholas Eberstadt, the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, joins School of War to discuss global population decline. What does a shrinking and aging population mean for the United States? What does it mean for China, whose demographic crisis may be even more severe? How could population decline reshape economic growth, military power, and geopolitical competition? And what happens to the international order when the world stops growing?
03:02 Population decline in America
006:15 Deaths exceeding births in the US
07:31 Global birth crash
14:49 Grounds for optimism
17:12 Small family trend
18:17 GDP relationship with population size
19:23 Individual prosperity vs. National strength
21:24 Rise in human life expectancy
24:36 Ben Carson’s prediction
27:11 Ukraine’s military revolution
30:47 American bad habits
33:48 AI and the labor market
37:25 Chinese depopulation crisis
48:50 What would a world war look like today?
51:48 US Alliance relationships
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