Decline and prosper!: changing global birth rates and the advantages of fewer children

Table of contents:
Front Matter
Introduction
Measuring Fertility
How Many Children Can Humans Have Biologically?
Fertility from the Dawn of Humanity Through the Nineteenth Century
The Demographic Transition: Fewer Deaths and Eventually Fewer Births
Contemporary Global Fertility
The New Have-Nots: Childlessness in the Twenty-First Century
More Education, Fewer Children
An Era of Choice: Childbearing Has Become More Planned
Fertility Preferences: How Many Children Do People Want?
Delaying Parenthood, for Better and for Worse
Finding a Mate: Contemporary Partnership and Conception
Money Matters: The Economics of Fertility
Fertility in the Aftermath of Disaster
New Times, Old Beliefs: Religion and Contemporary Fertility
Contemporary Fertility from an Evolutionary Perspective: Are the Fittest Still Surviving?
How Low Will It Go? Projecting Future Fertility
Fertility, Population Growth, and Population Composition
Fertility Policies: Past, Present, and Future Directions

Globally, women are having half as many children as they had just fifty years ago. Why have birth rates fallen, and how will low fertility affect our shared future?
In Decline and Prosper!, demographic expert Vegard Skirbekk offers readers an accessible, comprehensive and evidence-based overview of human reproduction. Readers learn about the evolution of childbearing across different populations and how fertility is related to (changes in) our reproductive capacity, contraception, education, religion, partnering, policies, economics, assisted reproduction, and catastrophes. Readers will explore the future of family size and its impact on human welfare, women’s empowerment and the environment. Skirbekk argues that low fertility is on the whole a good thing, while recognizing the challenges of population aging and “coincidental” childlessness. A balanced, integrative examination of one of the most important issues of our time, Decline and Prosper! drives home the fact that we must ultimately adapt to a world with fewer children. This book will be invaluable to anyone who is interested in the far-reaching effects of global fertility, including researchers and students of demography, social statistics, medical sociologists, family and childhood studies, human geographers, sociology of culture, social and public policy.
Also includes a Foreword by Professor Sarah Hayford, Director of the Institute for Population Research, Ohio State University, USA.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-91611-4