Fewer tells a monumental human story, largely ignored, but which promises to starkly change the human condition
in the years to come. Never before have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long,
in so many places, so surprisingly. In Fewer, Ben Wattenberg shows how and why this has occurred, and explains
what it means for the future. The demographic plunge, he notes, is starkly apparent in the developed nations of
Europe and Japan, which will lose about 150 million people in the next half century.
Starting from higher levels, but moving with geometric speed, the demographic decline is also apparent in the Less
Developed Nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Only the United States (so far) has been exempt from the
birth dearth, leaving America as more than "the sole super-power." Perhaps it should be called the global
"omni-power." These stark demographic changes will affect commerce, the environment, public financing,
and geo-politics. Here Wattenberg lists likely winners and losers. In Wattenberg's world of "The New Demography"
readers get a look at a topic often chattered about, but rarely understood.
Table of Contents
1. The story of this book
2. And then there were many fewer
3. Less developed, less fertility
4. America the exceptional : the baby makers
5. America the exponential : immigrant takers
6. The culture of alarmism
7. Why?
8. The graybe boom
9. Business
10. The environment
11. Geopolitics
12. Is there an immigration solution?
13. Numbers matter