After the Spike - by Dean Spears & Michael Geruso (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

What if the challenge for humanity's future is not too many people on a crowded planet, but too few people to sustain the progress that the world needs?

Most people on Earth today live in a country where birth rates already are too low to stabilize the population: fewer than two children for every two adults. In After the Spike, economists Dean Spears and Michael Geruso sound a wakeup call, explaining why global depopulation is coming, why it matters, and what to do now.

It would be easy to think that fewer people would be better--better for the planet, better for the people who remain. This book invites us all to think again. Despite what we may have been told, depopulation is not the solution we urgently need for environmental challenges like climate change. Nor will it raise living standards by dividing what the world can offer across fewer of us. Spears and Geruso investigate what depopulation would mean for the climate, for living standards, for equity, for progress, for freedom, for humanity's general welfare. And what it would mean if, instead, people came together to share the work of caregiving and of building societies where parenting fits better with everything else that people aspire to.

With new evidence and sharp insights, Spears and Geruso make a lively and compelling case for stabilizing the population--without sacrificing our dreams of a greener future or reverting to past gender inequities. They challenge us to see how depopulation threatens social equity and material progress, and how welcoming it denies the inherent value of every human life. More than an assembly of the most important facts, After the Spike asks what future we should want for our planet, for our children, and for one another.

Review Quotes

"Counterintuitive. . . . Spears and Geruso have started an essential conversation on how humans might realistically address the vexing challenges of population change."-- "Booklist (starred review)"

"After the Spike is a remarkable blend of empirical research and philosophical argument that has challenged, and changed, my thinking about population. I expect it will do the same for you."

----Peter Singer, author of The Life You Can Save and Animal Liberation

"After the Spike is an important book. Demography is destiny; Spears and Geruso tell a surprising story and show us how to shape that destiny for a sustainable, flourishing world."

--Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America and author of "Why Women Still Can't Have It All"

"Fascinating, thoughtful, and timely. Spears and Geruso are ahead of the global conversation. In ten years, everyone will be talking about global demographic decline and what to do about it. Read this book before your friends and rivals figure out the importance of this topic."

--Simon Johnson, 2024 Nobel Laureate in Economics

"I don't agree with every suggestion in this book of course, but I think it offers up some interesting and important conversations that we'd do well to take seriously. And a world in which parenting is easier would be a huge improvement!"

--Bill McKibben, author of Here Comes the Sun and The End of Nature, founder of Third Act and 350.org

"Spears and Geruso present a clear-eyed and compassionate argument about what we have to lose - not just from the worldwide drop in births already underway, but also from harmful and counterproductive attempts to boost births by coercing women's and couple's childbearing decisions."

--Diana Greene Foster, author of The Turnaway Study, MacArthur Fellow, professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco

"Spears and Geruso take us by the hand to understand the most dramatic period of human history--how a global population of millions became billions--but, importantly, what happens next. The insights and rigor--which come thick and fast--are matched by human and empathetic narrative."

--Hannah Ritchie, lead researcher at Our World in Data and author of Not the End of the World

"With stunning clarity, Spears and Geruso show why our assumptions about population, progress, and prosperity are leading us astray. If you want to understand where humanity is going, and why that matters, this book is essential reading."

--Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Regret, When, and Drive

About the Author

Dr. Dean Spears and Dr. Michael Geruso are economists, demographers, and associate professors at the University of Texas at Austin. Spears is a founding executive director of r.i.c.e, (a research institute for compassionate economics), a nonprofit that works to promote children's health, growth, and survival in rural India. Geruso served as a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers, where he advised on healthcare and population change. Their research on health, population, and climate change has been published in top peer-reviewed journals including the American Economic Review, Nature Climate Change, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Both live in Austin, Texas.