How Population Change Will Transform Our World

In How Population Will Transform Our World , Sarah Harper looks at fertility rates and age structures of populations in different regions of the world against the backdrop of urbanization and climate change, drawing out the profound implications and challenges for societies, economies, and the environment in the decades to come.

Predicting the shape of our future populations is vital for installing the infrastructure, welfare, and provisions necessary for society to survive. There are many opportunities and challenges that will come with the changes in our populations over the 21st century. In this new addition to the 21st Century Challenges series, Sarah Harper works to dispel myths such as the fear of unstoppable global growth resulting in a population explosion, or that climate change will lead to the mass movement of environmental refugees; and instead considers the future shape of our populations in light of demographic trends in fertility, mortality, and migration, and their national and global impact. How Population Change Will Transform Our World looks at population trends by region to highlight the key issues facing us in the coming decades, including the demographic inertia in Europe, demographic dividend in Asia, high fertility and mortality in Africa, the youth bulge in the Middle East, and the balancing act of migration in the Americas. Harper concludes with an analysis of global challenges we must plan for such as the impact of climate change and urbanization, and the difficulty of feeding 10 billion people, and considers ways in which we can prepare for, and mitigate against, these challenges.

1 - The Age Narrative
2 - How did we get here?
3 - The Grey Burden
4 - The Peril of Youth
5 - Too Many Children?
6 - Our Future Selves

Sarah Harper (MA (Cantab.) Cambridge; DPhil (Oxon) Oxford) is Professor of Gerontology at Oxford University and Director of the Oxford Institute of Ageing, a multi-disciplinary research unit concerned with the implications of population ageing, and director of the Clore Programme on Population-Environment Change. Her research concerns globalization and global ageing, and the impact of population change, in particular the implications at the global, societal and individual level of the age-structural shift from predominantly young to predominantly older societies. She has authored, edited and contributed to several books, including Families in Ageing Societies (Editor, OUP, 2004), Ageing Societies: Myths, Challenges, and Opportunities (Hodder Arnold, 2005) and Is the Planet Full? (Contributer, OUP, 2014). She is also the editor of the Journal of Population Ageing (Springer).