America’s Coming Population Crash—and China’s, with Nicholas Eberstadt

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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Find more at The Free Press (thefp.com/s/school-of-war).

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