After the Spike is a frustrating book. It sounds the alarm on a real contemporary problem—the worldwide decline in birthrates that may be sending whole societies, even humanity itself, into a demographic death spiral. The “Spike” in the title refers to the graph tracing global population: a giddy rise since 1800 to our current eight billion plus, soon to experience an equally dramatic fall. But its analyses of causes and cures are less persuasive.
The University of Texas economists Dean Spears and Michael Geruso specialize in studying economic demography and its impact on development. Spears is particularly concerned with children’s health in rural India. But After the Spike is aimed at a popular audience, not an academic one. Its chatty pages are packed with graphs, charts, boldface bullet points, pop culture references, and personal anecdotes. The authors’ optimism and confidence are unexpectedly strong for a monitory book.
The peril of plummeting birth rates, which could depopulate the earth, has only recently started to attract attention. Americans are waking up to a possible shortfall in Social Security funding if there are too few young workers to support retired ones. Europeans worry about losing essential social services if tax rolls decline. With lifetime birthrates below 2.1 children per woman, two-thirds of the world’s people are failing to replace themselves.
Every developed nation except Israel, where large ultra-Orthodox families raise the rate to 2.75, is procreating below the replacement level. Regionally, the European Union has the lowest rate (1.5), followed by North America (1.8), the United States (1.6), and then Latin America and the Caribbean (2.0). The world’s lowest rate in 2025 is a virtual tie between Taiwan and South Korea, (.72) which translates to three children per four women. (Figures cited here come from a variety of sources, but the relative sizes are trustworthy.)
Although birth rates are falling globally, women in sub-Saharan Africa bear children at more than twice the replacement rate (4.4). Nine of the ten countries topping the reproductive charts are in sub-Saharan Africa. The tenth is Afghanistan (4.66). Higher birth rates correlate with less economic development and lower average incomes. As living standards rise, birthrates fall.
The surge in world population since 1800 did not result from more childbearing, but from fewer deaths in childhood. Under pre-modern conditions, 30, 40, or even 50% of children born never reached adulthood. Better public health and nutrition, which lowers infant mortality, actually reduces births. When more children can survive, families have fewer of them. After the Spike devotes considerable space to a program in India, which Spears and his wife have worked with, called Kangaroo Mother Care. It uses low-tech methods to save premature babies. The grateful parents of healthier children do not need to keep trying for more pregnancies to achieve their desired family size.
Spears and Geruso argue from many angles that rates, not raw numbers, shape population patterns. (Of the three factors driving demography—fertility, nuptiality, and mortality—only the first is significant in After the Spike.) For example, India, home to 1.4 billion people, is now the world’s largest country. But with births dipping below 2 per woman, it is headed for depopulation. The authors present various scenarios predicting future global depopulation if fertility is not restored to replacement levels. Any mix of family sizes will work so long as the average equals 2.1 children. (This figure is 2.1 rather than 2.0 to allow for infertility.)
But no one has found a way to arrest falling birthrates. Government experiments with child benefits, tax credits, paid parental leave, free IVF, and the like have had little impact. Spears and Geruso strongly condemn Romania’s coercive measures to increase births, just as they do China’s cruelty in reducing them. Whatever the solution, it will be a matter of choice, not policy. Geruso’s ethnic French-Canadian grandmother was one of twelve children, but his mother had just one sibling and bore only two children. This pattern matched population collapse among Quebecois in the middle of the 20th century. Geruso reports approvingly that his pious Catholic mother used contraceptives.
Stabilization—even at high levels—is the authors’ desired outcome. They firmly reject depopulation as a remedy for global warming or ecological ruin because it cannot happen fast enough to matter. One whole section is devoted to arguing the case for more people, another to rebutting objections to it. They maintain that larger populations produce more technological innovation and therefore raise living standards. Progress in other fields has not necessarily required that. Consider fifth-century Athens, Renaissance Florence, or Edinburgh during the Scottish Enlightenment.
After the Spike’s enthusiasm for tightly packed cities will not be universally shared, even though they claim it will address global warming—their prime ecological concern—better than dispersed settlement. Because air pollution is down and food production is up across the world, positive trends will continue indefinitely as science marches on. The book has no room to worry about threats to water, soil, plant, or animal life. If it did, human ingenuity and efficiency would be expected to prevail. But pace, Julian Simon, there really are limits to growth. The law of entropy has not been repealed.
Auctorial optimism shines brightest when discussing the disproportionate burdens childbearing puts on women. When motherhood costs women no more than fatherhood costs men, they predict, women will be open to having more children, easing depopulation. Pregnancy and child-rearing will be easier in perfectly liberalized societies.
For example, because medication now exists for morning sickness—they mention this four times—all other discomforts eventually will be mitigated if researchers only try hard enough. Permit this reviewer to disagree. The only way to make mothers biologically as free as fathers is to grow babies in tanks. As for all couples dividing all parental responsibilities, the world’s “Afghans” will not turn into “Swedes.” Nevertheless, working toward incremental improvements is worthwhile on the “one starfish” principle.
Regrettably, Spears and Geruso insist that women’s status depends on “reproductive freedom.” They believe that no one must be compelled to have an unwanted child. While ignoring other methods of family limitation, they strongly support artificial contraception, abortion, and IVF. (They are shocked that anyone considers frozen embryos “babies.”) They even quote renowned science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s justification for aborting her first pregnancy because otherwise she would have never met her husband and had her other three children.
Together, the authors’ own families have seen three live births, four miscarriages, and three failed rounds of IVF. When Roe v. Wade was overturned, Geruso’s wife was newly pregnant. The couple was terrified that she would not receive necessary care if she miscarried because Texas forbade abortions. She did lose the baby while out of state and complained about her hesitant treatment. After the Spike repeats the discredited claim that “women were forced to carry nonviable pregnancies at significant risk to their health and lives.” The Gerusos did not try for another child.
Despite those positions condemned by Catholic teaching, Spears and Geruso are brave to celebrate human life as a “miracle,” not a cancer on the planet. Declaring that “more good is better,” they insist that even lives less rich than their own are still worth living. They offer evidence that high—but stable—population levels are compatible with justice, equality, and abundance.
Such views are shocking to minds still shadowed by Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb and the Club of Rome’s 1972 report The Limits to Growth, which predicted mass starvation and resource exhaustion caused by exploding populations. Although events proved them wrong, these books remain influential. Erhlich’s was reissued in 2024, and the Club of Rome report issued a 30-Year Update in 2004. But they did not create fear as much as amplify what had been gathering since Thomas Malthus issued An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798.
Overpopulation anxiety can be usefully tracked through science fiction, a genre ever sensitive to such trends. It starts showing up as a plot premise in the 1950s, for instance, in Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel (1954). It is no accident that three classic novels of overpopulation were written just before Erhlich’s book was published: Harry Harrison’s 1966 “Make Room, Make Room! (filmed as Soylent Green in 1972), Philip K. Dick’s 1968 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (filmed as Blade Runner in 1982), and John Brunner’s 1968 Stand on Zanzibar. Media audiences still expect dystopias to be overpopulated.
Those tumultuous decades before Spears and Geruso were born were soaked in propaganda for “the child-free lifestyle” and zero population growth, the latter idea named for an advocacy group now called Population Connection. Walter Cronkite’s CBS Evening News ran a regular feature called “Can the World Be Saved?” China and some Third World governments forcibly aborted and sterilized their people. Humanity was being steadily trained away from a taste for children, the most fundamental reason people reproduce—or not.
These antigrowth attitudes remain so embedded in popular consciousness that efforts to discuss the perils of de-population provoke vicious attacks on “pronatalism” as antifeminist racism, a mere mask for white patriarchal Christian nationalism. This is an ironic reversal of the old eugenicist fears of race suicide because the “wrong” sort of people bred too fast.
With their well-burnished progressive credentials, Spears and Geruso are well-positioned to provide hard data that has a chance of being heeded. After the Spike demonstrates that falling birth rates are ominously real and urgently need addressing. To paraphrase Ben Sasse, the future belongs to those who place a bet on life and show up to collect it.
After the Spike: Population, Progress and the Case for People
By Dean Spears and Michael Geruso
Simon & Schuster, 2025
Hardcover, 320 pages
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The ultra Orthodox im Israel do help move the needle demographically upwards but if I remember correctly, non Orthodox Israelis tend to have replacement or above fertility rates also. Being constantly under existential threat can have that sort of effect.
One of my children works as a demographer and they said that it’s kind of like natural selection and extinction. The populations that are growing like the Amish, Mennonites, Hasidic Jews, etc are the ones who can adapt and flourish even as our society becomes increasingly less human and family oriented.
Last month I visited with family in a rural area that has been losing population for decades. The average age for men there had reached 60. One remaining public school school serves the entire county and has K- 12th Grade under one roof. The high school graduating class last year was 9 seniors and one of those had been homeschooled.
In the last 20 or so years Amish and Mennonite families have been moving in and fixing up abandoned farms and reopening country stores. A former public elementary school has been repurposed for their worship sevices. You see highway signs cautioning drivers to watch for horse and buggies. The way things are going, the Amish and Mennonites will be the primary population in another 20 years. Their numbers tend to double in each generation.
The Amish and Mennonites do still have large families, although smaller than in the past. The restraint on their numbers is loss of children who don’t choose to stay with the group. That runs about 50%, as I recall. After their Rumspringa year, about half their teens leave their communities without being baptized into their church. Alas, the acids of modernity will come for the Amish and Mennonites, too.
I know things can change very quickly, but as of 2025 the Amish had high retention rates of their children: 80% to 90% or more depending upon which Amish or Mennonite community. They often leave one community for another but still remain Anabaptist. The most conservative groups seem to have the highest retention rates.
We were blessed last month to meet with an old friend’s son who grew up, married a Mennonite girl & joined their church. They have 7 children & he owns his own welding business where he works with his sons.
The Amish & traditional Mennonites don’t distain all technology. They choose what will work for them without disrupting their family, faith, & culture.And they’re very creative & resourceful about that.
Some years ago, my wife and I rode the Strasburg Railroad near Lancaster
PA to ride a dinner train themed “Dinner with the Amish”.
The event was traditional Amish fare (ham loaf, shoofly pie, etc) while having an opportunity to discuss the Amish life with an Amish family.
The father of the host family talked about the challenges facing his community with great candor. I remember him talking in general about competing with mechanized production (especially against Chinese made counterfeits sold as “Amish made”) ,the difficulty in acquiring enough land by a family to support itself using the traditional methods and the loss of demand for tobacco.
They also discussed the fact that any sort of serious medical issue requires them to go to an “English” doctor. He speculated that necessity will force an increasing tolerance of formerly disallowed technologies. An example is multiple collisions between buggies and cars have resulted acquiescing to the government-now buggies have blaze orange haz-mat reflectors. Of course the distinctions have always been curious to the point of capriciousness. Buttons are allowed, zippers not. Bicycles disallowed, scooters, permitted.
Beyond that they have -as do all closed societies, genetic problems. One of the most serious is Ellis–Van Creveld syndrome, which presents with a variety of morphological abnormalities and congenital heart disease.
While the Amish are generally benign, and often exhibit heroic virtue (the case of the 2006 Nickel Mines School mass murder comes to mind-interviewed, the relatives of the victims readily forgave the man-who committed suicide), they shouldn’t be idealized as some sort of utopian society-they have a unique set of problems and challenges.
And of course, the term “Anabaptist” comes with theological implications that we cannot accept, nor should we celebrate if somebody converts, but I get it, your posts exhibit a rather profound tendency to xenophilia.
If you are referring to the young Mennonite father of 7, he was raised as an Evangelical and was one of 12 children.
There are virtually no Catholics in that county and no Catholic church. You would have to drive across the state line to find a Catholic parish or 45 minutes to an hour in any other direction.
The Mennonites in that part of the country have missionaries in places like Belize, Africa, and South America so the gene pool gets mixed up a little more. Which can be beneficial.
When we moved to Virginia 11 years ago, we needed help with yardwork. I got the name of a young Mennonite man who was married and expecting his first child. Since then we’ve used his landscaping services many times. He and his wife now have six children. He once asked me why I as a Catholic use his services. I told him that I like to support men who are family oriented and who possess personal integrity. He accepted my comments with genuine humility.
Thank you so much for sharing that Deacon Edward. They are wonderful Christian people for sure.
It would have been interesting to ask “why wouldn’t I?”
I don’t have to share their theology to recognize they are generally honest in fair in their commercial dealings. I used to regularly go to an Amish market for lunch and their sandwiches were always generously sized and sold at a really fair price. They also sold farm raised meats, pies and some interesting parfait desserts.
In Kidron, Ohio (located a bit east of mid-diagonal between Cleveland-Akron and Columbus) you can visit a huge Lehman’s store. Lehman’s is also online.
Originally founded by Mennonites from Switzerland, Kidron and Lehman’s still exist. The store and town may also still be predominantly Mennonite. If you are ever in the vicinity, you should visit.
Perhaps it’s the Swiss genetic penchant for precision or something other, but Lehman’s hand-held can opener is without doubt the BEST on the market. It hasn’t rusted, gone out of gear or broken in any other way after ten years of hard use (we are not gourmet ‘source’ chefs in my kitchen, so the kids open a lot of cans😥). Their clothespins are INDESTRUCTIBLE. In addition to my endorsement, they have a reputation for first-class cast iron pans, tools, utensils, wood-burning stoves, and many other items worth their price. Their flyswatters and wool mops are priceless too as are their wonderful (in a power loss) oil burning lamps.
I buy things from Lehman’s online. They do have great stuff and when I send someone a gift from there I can trust it’s not going to fall apart or disappoint.
I hang my wash outside as often as possible & there’s nothing more annoying than a cheap clothespin coming apart.Which happens frequently.
How is your son doing today? I hope this finds him well.
🙂
Hi mrscracker,
Thank you for your kind and generous prayers for my son; he tires easily but he is on the mend and doing as well as can be expected.
YeS! I too put clothes on the line, but I hope never to get a city code summons as the practice is not allowed in my town! (Blue suburb of Seattle). I have a privacy fence and lots of shrubs around the clothesline, but still. Even I cringe when I put underwear up/out!
Thank you meiron for letting us know and I will continue to keep your son in prayer. 🙏❤️
Excellent article.
I was a pro-life atheist when the notion of overpopulation started to become an intellectual dogma. The largest factor that began to lead me out of atheism involved perceiving how stupid atheists tend to be. I knew it could not be an accident.
In NYC where I live, it is not uncommon to see women, not quite so young anymore, and of a more affluent sort, pushing baby carriages. Except they often do not hold babies. They carry their pure breed doggies, least they not become “selfish” by raising an actual child.
Dataintelo reports: “The global refrigerated pet food market was valued at $4.8 billion in 2025, with North America holding 41.3% of the market.
This implies U.S. refrigerated pet food spending of roughly $2.0 billion in 2025.
“The U.S. baby food market is significantly smaller than the pet food market.
The global baby food market is large, but U.S.-specific spending is typically estimated at around $1–1.5 billion annually (based on industry reports and market share patterns).
“However, no directly sourced U.S.-specific figure appeared in the search results, so this is an inference based on typical U.S. share of global baby food sales.”
“(Because the search results did not return a U.S.-specific baby food spending figure, this portion is an inference rather than a sourced fact.)
Note the ‘refrigerated’ pet food stat. Add in non-refrigerated, the numbers tell a more horrid tale.
Also, Edward, what is up with the increase in people needing ‘support dogs’? One young woman brought one to Mass a few weeks ago.
I’m a huge fan of dogs but yes, this is becoming weird.
I find it interesting that neither side of the population question thinks that human beings can exist or prosper without the technology of, say,the last 150 or so years. While its lack may be less conducive to a large number of densely packed mega-cities, it certainly doesn’t quite spell our extinction as a species. I speak here as someone who is quite pro-life, but who also is not unaware of the resiliancy of the human race.
One can look at the Abortion Industrial Complex as part of the reason for the decline. Associated with this and other part of the reason is that the Catholic Hierarchy essentially looks the other way. There are a few days in January where there is a pro life march, but after that nothing. The Catholic Leadership has for the most part has no justice for the unborn.
We used to have a clinic committing feticides a short walk from the cathedral. Had there had been a slave auction onsite, which actually was a few blocks the other direction back in the day, I think the bishop might have shown up occasionally to protest.But protesting the daily taking of innocent lives was left to a handful of laypeople.
“When motherhood costs women no more than fatherhood costs men, they predict, women will be open to having more children, easing depopulation.”
.
Motherhood will always “cost” more, cuz biology. And growing children in tanks is the dumbest idea I have ever heard. It won’t work any more than “baby bonuses” will.
The comment by Sandra about growing babies in tanks was clearly sarcastic.
Oops. I understood that to be a suggestion from the book, not Sandra.
.
I need glasses, apparently.
That’s something I suffer from frequently. Especially before coffee in the morning.
🙂
When we were driving through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, we saw a fair number of Amish buggies (I assume Amish). Even saw a younger teen driving one. Very cool.
Yes, it is really interesting to see. Imagine if our mode of transportation was grass fed & could reproduce itself?
🙂
Both Amish & Old Order Mennonites use horse & buggies. I’ve seen banks & places of business that have hitching posts outside for their horse & buggy customers. They’ll take buggies through the fast food drive thru’s also.
Clearly sarcastic yes. A possible future assault on maternity?
There is a 2023 paper on PubMed.
“Artificial womb: opportunities and challenges for public health”
In 2017, a sheep was “successfully gestated” in an artificial womb.
“And growing children in tanks is the dumbest idea I have ever heard.”
It’s not dumb. It’s manifestly evil. It will be sold as a way to liberate women from the burdens and perils of gestation, but it will actually be the tool of individuals such as Pete Buttegieg, who have no use for women. It will have women expendable and people into commodities-apparently Aldous Huxley was issuing blueprints, not a cautionary tale when he wrote Brave New World.
And it will fail, because the womb is more than a isolated incubator. Children need physical mothers for normal physical development-even after birth. A lot of people who were born into the era when Nestle and others touted “formula” as better than mother’s milk have immunological issues because they were denied things that only mother’s milk can provide. Mother’s milk refines the gastrointestinal biome and changes over time-colostrum is filled with retinol for example.
Of course we have NO idea how many chemical and hormonal agents are sent to assist with the normal development of the UNBORN child.
The situation could improve if the Catholic Hierarchy was actually prolife.
“And so to bed”
We survived the alleged threats of the next ice age, acid rain, the hole in the ozone, global warming, and climate change. How about we wait and see what happens before we jump on the apocalypse bandwagon? We’ll be fine.
Agreed.
I find it interesting that in the year I was born the world had only about 1/3 of the population of today and yet, somehow, plenty of technological and scientific advancements. It’s also interesting to note that the plague took 1/3 of Europe’s population yet, somehow, European civilization did not collapse. World War I took 1-2% of the human population of less than 2 billion and still, somehow, civilization has continued. Agreed, we will be fine.
“It’s also interesting to note that the plague took 1/3 of Europe’s population yet, somehow, European civilization did not collapse.”
Well, one factor was they didn’t view sex and procreation as a curse.
Yes, and plague deaths were across age groups .
What we are facing today isn’t an age balanced population decrease but a growing number of elderly with fewer children being born to replace them.
“Stacey Waring, 40, a nurse from Nottingham, says global uncertainty has made her think twice about starting a family.
She is one of an increasing number of people having either no or fewer children, contributing to a national and global picture of falling birth rates.
In 2025, births in England and Wales fell for the fourth year in a row to their lowest level in nearly half a century…But she says she feels lucky to live at a time when people have more choice about whether to start a family.
“If I’d had children, I’d have had to reduce my hours at work,” she says.”I’m a huge traveller and go away whenever I can in my camper van, which I wouldn’t be able to do if I had children.”
The estimated number of children born per woman fell to just under 1.4 for England and Wales in 2025, down from 1.9 in 2010.”
BBC 5/27/2026
“Stacey Waring, 40, a nurse from Nottingham, says global uncertainty has made her think twice about starting a family.
She is one of an increasing number of people having either no or fewer children, contributing to a national and global picture of falling birth rates.”
She’s a nurse and she thinks this is an option @ 40?
I’m guessing obstretics isn’t her speciality. The chance of her conceiving her first @ 40 is an extraordinary long shot, let alone her need to have supervision of primigravida. And she thinks she has time to contemplate?
That’s a large part of the birthrate problem, Mr Pitchfork. Women have a finite window of fertility. By the time they believe everything is set up properly to have children, it can be too late.
To be fair , a mother of 3 was also interviewed by the BBC. She sounded like she would have liked more children but she was spending money on extra curricular activities for her 3 and didn’t think she could afford that for another.
That’s a large part of the birthrate problem, Mr Pitchfork. Women have a finite window of fertility.
I did maternity care auditing for MA eligibles. I doubt any of them ever thought that an accountant two hours away would be reading their OB/GYN records, but on most engagements, it was three of us.
I am familiar with “supervision of elderly primigravida”, so yes there is a window and always has been. “40 is the new 30” is a stupid slogan, not a new biological reality-and acting though it is so is a recipe for “nulliparity”