Fewer and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more



or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Start reading Fewer on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Sorry, this item is not available in
Image not available for
Color:
Image not available

To view this video download Flash Player

 

Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future [Paperback]

Ben J. Wattenberg
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)

List Price: $14.95
Price: $13.46 & FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $1.49 (10%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Only 3 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Want it Tuesday, May 21? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Kindle Edition $12.79  
Hardcover $22.87  
Paperback $13.46  
Image
Save on Popular Books This Summer
Browse our Bookshelf Favorites store for big savings on popular fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and more.

Book Description

August 4, 2005
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. These stark demographic changes will affect commerce, the environment, public financing, and geo-politics. In Wattenberg's world of The New Demography readers get a look at a topic often chattered about, but rarely understood.

Frequently Bought Together

Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future + Population and Society: An Introduction to Demography
Price for both: $78.76

Buy the selected items together


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What starts off as a persuasive statistical analysis dwindles into demagoguery in Wattenberg’s latest demographic exploration. Wattenberg (The Real America; The Birth Dearth), expanding on previous work, offers a detailed breakdown of trends toward global depopulation. The previous population projections, he considers, grossly overestimated peak population numbers, and even current U.N. projections, he says, tend toward the high side. The discrepancies are due to dramatically decreasing fertility rates throughout the world, he argues, making population growth rate much slower than anticipated. He predicts that after peaking in the next decades, the rate will drop sharply. Wattenberg’s book examines these numbers, their causes and their ramifications. Keeping his statistics comprehensible to the demographic novice, he makes a strong case against environmentalist praise of depopulation and skillfully analyzes the economic and social situations that might occur if his predictions play out. However, as Wattenberg surveys the reasons behind declining fertility rates, his arguments take an assertive turn. Wattenberg bemoans abortion, women who put careers before children, homosexuality and co-habitation without marriage—all with little of the statistical analysis that bolsters his initial arguments. Wattenberg himself says, "straightforward demographic numbers can engender mighty arguments," but doesn’t let his own numbers speak for themselves.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

An engagingly argued look at what happens when we get what we wish for, and Wattenberg is the thinker to write it. (Detroit Free Press )

A remarkable book...in terms of its importance for our country and the world. (Newt Gingrich The Washington Times )

One of the more interesting books of 2004. (Thomas Bray Detroit News )

He has done his homework…in a breezy and provocative style while providing the data to support his concern. (Marshall Fishwick The Roanoke Times )

Fewer is an extremely informative and provocative book. (Howard Upton Tulsa World )

This book is the foundation for long-term global econometric and political thinking. (First Principles U.S. )

Fewer provides valuable food for thought. (Tom Baker Daily Yomiuri )

Nimble narrative of demographic data. (Martha Farnsworth Riche World Watch )

Lucidly show[s] how the once-feared population explosion is giving way to a birth dearth. (Marvin Olasky World )

This thought-provoking book addresses an important issue and is presented in nontechnical language accessible to a wide spectrum of readers. Highly recommended. (W.C. Struning CHOICE )

It is important that good minds pay close attention to these changes. This book is a very helpful contribution to that effort. (Bill Muehlenberg News Weekly )

[He has] gathered the data and usefully corrected widespread and longstanding misrepresentations. (Eric Cohen, Ethics and Public Policy Center )

Keeping his statistics comprehensible to the demographic novice, he...skillfully analyzes the economic and social situations that might occur. (Publishers Weekly )

Ben Wattenberg has again brought a vital issue to the public policy debate. (Joseph Chamie, Director, Population Division, DESA, United Nations )

This fascinating book tells us more than anything yet about why we are Fewer.... I strongly recommend it. (Jeane Kirkpatrick, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and member of Reagan’s Cabinet )

There is no better analyst to guide us through the complex political, social, and economic implications of this development than Ben Wattenberg. (Francis Fukuyama, Professor, The School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University )

Scholarly, readable and compelling. (Senator Joseph Lieberman )

Product Details

  • Paperback: 250 pages
  • Publisher: Ivan R. Dee (August 4, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1566636736
  • ISBN-13: 978-1566636735
  • Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.6 x 9.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #702,519 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
41 of 46 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Population Implosion February 10, 2005
Format:Hardcover
World depopulation has become the most important, and alarming, new demographic trend to emerge in the past few decades. While the world has experienced low fertility rates before, they have been due to great social disruptions such as war, famine, depression or plague. But the rates always went up afterwards.

Things are different now. The global downward trend in fertility is both long-term and pronounced. The numbers are alarming. There are now 63 nations with below-replacement fertility. The replacement level is a Total Fertility Rate of 2.1 children per women. Yet everywhere TFRs are plummeting. Today all 44 modern nations, with the exception of Albania, are below the 2.1 replacement level. America is just on that level.

And consider this incredible statistic: European TFR has fallen for fifty consecutive years. Many European nations have a TFR of 1.2, such as Italy, Greece, and Austria. Spain's level is down to 1.1. The UN estimates that Europe's population of 728 million people today will shrink to 632 million within 50 years.

The trend in the developing world is even more staggering. In 35 years the TFR there has fallen from 6.01 to around 2.8, and it continues to spiral downwards. South Korea, for example, has a TFR of just over 1.1, while China's rate is 1.8. This is down from 6.06 for China in the late 60s.

Fertility rates are falling rapidly in Arab and Muslim nations as well. For example, forty years ago the TFR in North Africa was 7.1 children per woman. Today it is 3.2 and still falling.

Now Wattenberg has written on these issues before. In 1987 he wrote The Birth Dearth. So why another book? What really shook up Wattenberg, and spurred on this newer book, was the fact that the UN made a major readjustment of its population projections in 2002. For decades prior to this date the UN had been predicting upward population trends for the developed world over the next half century.

But in March 2002 it made a major revision of thinking on the trends in the developing world. Before this time it assumed that the TFR in the poor countries would fall to just 2.1 children per woman. It now changed that figure to 1.85, a full quarter of a child per woman. That meant that world population in the future would go down, not up. It is this new demographic that has really set off the alarm bells.

Wattenberg gives us plenty of statistical information. And he points out that the US is one nation that seems to be bucking the trend. American TFR has actually risen lately, mainly due to immigration. But around the rest of the world the picture is bleak indeed.

The causes are all the usual suspects: urbanisation, education, women in the workplace, contraception, abortion, etc. But the real question is, what will be the effect of this world-wide population implosion? We just do not know because it has never happened before, at least on such a large scale. How will economies fare? How will societies change?

We do know that we are experiencing aging populations. But with a shrinking supply of babies, and therefore taxpayers, real crises are and will develop in simply meeting the needs of the growing elderly population. Who will pay for their pensions and medical care? These problems will be pronounced in all of the West, but especially in Europe and parts of Southeast Asia.

Wattenberg looks at a number of implications of the New Demographics, including the geopolitical situation. Concerning the issue of freedom and democracy, the trends up until recently had looked grim. The free Western world (with the exception of America) was experiencing population decline. In the meantime, the non-democratic Muslim world was growing. Now most populations are in decline, include the Muslim world. With shrinking populations go declining defence budgets. America is the last remaining Western democracy that still has the numbers to sustain a viable defensive structure. In a world threatened by international terrorism, that defence capability is welcome indeed.

But how things will progress in the future is an open question. For America to maintain its role as leader of the free world, it will have to keep its population levels up. Can immigration do this? As to immigration in general, he thinks this is mainly a healthy thing, and disagrees with those like Patrick Buchanan (The Death of the West), who describe it in worst-case scenario terms. In the short term America and the world should continue to benefit from immigration. The long term gets a bit unclear however.

Wattenberg also looks at the issue of illegal immigration. In total, illegal immigrants make up only about 3 per cent of the US population. He thinks that overall their presence is not an overwhelming problem, with potential positives often out-weighing the negatives.

He concludes by noting that the Less Developed Countries could in fact experience a "demographic dividend". He notes that poor countries with falling fertility rates are growing wealthier quicker than are the rich modern nations. In the meantime the New Demography is bad for most Western nations. Thus the need to spread the vision of freedom and democracy around the world, lest non- (or anti-) democratic nations win by default, by simply taking over due to sheer force of numbers.

No one really knows where these trends will take us. Much of Wattenberg's book could be called speculative. But it is important that good minds pay close attention to these changes. This book is a very helpful contribution to that effort.
Was this review helpful to you?
118 of 140 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Deserves study worldwide October 23, 2004
Format:Hardcover
Ben Wattenberg's "Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future" is a remarkable book and, in terms of its importance for our country and the world, it should attract a great deal more attention than most of the presidential campaign advertising.

Mr. Wattenberg reports conclusively that the world will have far fewer people than was expected even a decade ago, that in numbers and age and gender patterns this smaller population will be distributed in ways that will be significant, and that the implications for the environment, the economy and national security will be quite profound.

The biggest news is that in sheer numbers the human race is now likely to peak at 8.5 billion people instead of the United Nations projection of 11.5 billion. Even the U.N. demographers now agree that the population explosion will never reach the numbers they had once projected.

The biggest reason for this dramatic decline was captured in an earlier book by Mr. Wattenberg, "The Birth Dearth." Women are simply having fewer children and the result is that in some countries population is already starting to go down.

As Mr. Wattenberg notes, in order to sustain the current population, the average woman would have to have 2.33 children. Falling below that average will result in a population decline. Today some 40 countries are already below the replacement rate and Mr. Wattenberg expects virtually every country to be below the replacement rate by the end of our lifetime.

Fascinatingly, after all the focus on Chinese compulsory population control, it is not China that has had the most rapid change in birthrates among Asian countries. That honor goes to South Korea, where women now average only 1.17 children (even lower than Japan). China has dropped to 1.825 and is still declining.

Mr. Wattenberg makes so many fascinating points in this thin book that it is impossible to cover them all in a review. However, a few deserve to be singled out.

Europe is going to lose population dramatically by mid-century and therefore become significantly older. This will almost certainly entail a significant shift in power and in economic competitiveness away from an aging and shrinking European Union.

Mexico is on the verge of dropping below the replacement rate; over the next generation this will almost certainly slow the rate of migration to the United States. Russia is facing a demographic crisis, with the shortest lifespan for males of any industrial country and a catastrophic decline in women willing to bear children.

Mr. Wattenberg highlights the intellectual dishonesty of the Paul Ehrlich, left-wing environmentalists and their factual mistakes over the last generation. Mr. Ehrlich had predicted famines beginning in the 1970s. They simply haven't happened. The global warming projections all assumed a population of 11.5 billion. If the human race peaks at only 8.5 billion people - 3 billion fewer than predicted - and then starts a long-term decline, how that changes all those gloom-and-doom predictions.

Mr. Wattenberg highlights the unique role of the United States as the one industrial country that will keep growing. American population growth is a combination of the highest birthrate of any industrial country (2.01 children per female) and our willingness to accept immigration. Mr. Wattenberg projects that the United States will continue to grow in economic and other forms of power, while Europe and Japan decline dramatically. Indeed, in the Wattenberg vision of the future, there are only three large nations by 2050: China, India and the United States.

This is a book that should lead to very profound discussions, given its implications for pension programs in Europe and Japan, its implications for economic development throughout the world and its implications for environmental management and an honest assessment of the future.

Finally, this book is a tribute to the continued, persistent willingness of Mr. Wattenberg to take facts as they are presented and follow them without an ideological or political agenda. Hopefully it will lead many policy-makers to think deeply about how much the future will differ from their current expectations and then to ask how those differences should change American and world policies.
Was this review helpful to you?
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Didn't we enjoy making babies? June 10, 2007
Format:Paperback
The argument that the world is overpopulated is a common one now, especially with the increasing fears of global warming. Some have predicted that population growth would outstrip the food supply, causing famine. Authors such as Thomas Malthus in 1798 noted that the food supply grew arithmetically, while population grew geometrically, leading to devastation. The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich in 1968 predicted that hundreds of millions would perish in the 1970's from famine. These disasters never occurred, and it seems now that quite the opposite might take place.

Ben Wattenberg sheds new light on the issue about how we will have to deal with fewer people, and declining populations in the future. Currently, all European nations have below replacement-level fertility, and even Middle Eastern and Asian countries. The Europeans, even with heavy immigration are still experiencing negative population growth. Russia for example, is losing circa 700,000 people per year due to mortality and emigration. Interesting issues are examined such as integration into Western societies, for example, and whether or not democratic countries can remain so with an influx of people who reject its ideals. And can Europe remain economically competitive with a shrinking workforce that has to support an increasing percentage of those on pension?

The author also discusses possible reasons why demographic decline in many countries is occurring, such as education levels, contraceptives, urbanization, and religious beliefs toward the issue, to name a few.

I found the book not excessively political so I think anyone would enjoy reading it. Well researched, well referenced and above all captivating, Fewer is a great book regarding demographic decline.
Was this review helpful to you?
Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars Too basic... even for those of us who are not demographers
I was expecting a lot from the book, since Amazon has at the top of the list on this topic. However, the book is too basic. Read more
Published on April 17, 2011 by Mr. Pablo Rodas
5.0 out of 5 stars Lets hope Wattenberg is right!
As an older individual who was born into a world with less than 3 billion souls, I was deeply relieved to learn that projected population growth will slow and actually decline. Read more
Published on November 1, 2010 by Greg Andre
2.0 out of 5 stars A Disappointment
Ultimately, this book turned out to be a disappointment. And that is unfortunate because the subject matter is one of the great, largely unnoticed, stories of the next fifty to... Read more
Published on July 7, 2009 by Charger
3.0 out of 5 stars Data That 99.99% of The World Is Unaware Of
The book is not as alarmist as some reviewers have indicated, but it does provide for another counter view to which most of us have been educated to believe since the early 19th... Read more
Published on June 27, 2009 by James East
1.0 out of 5 stars Pollyanna Wants More People
I would really like to believe what Ben Wattenberg writes in this book "Fewer" about the prospects for world population. He thinks that overpopulation is no threat at all. Read more
Published on February 3, 2009 by John Loken
3.0 out of 5 stars It may get lonely around here!
I found the numerical research and discussion very interesting and thought-provoking, but then I'm a statistician / analyst by trade. Read more
Published on January 4, 2009 by KLP
5.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading For Investores and Macro Economists
Ever since the days when Thomas Malthus predicted that an economy's population would starve once population growth exceeded food growth, demographics has played an important role... Read more
Published on December 18, 2008 by Rich Johnson
1.0 out of 5 stars Same old demographic fears
Depopulation misleading fears have been around for some time. Wattenberg should revisit his calculations and read some good demographic books, like "Demography and Degeneration:... Read more
Published on February 20, 2007 by C. Lopez
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating book
Check it out, very interesting. It'll give you a brief glimpse into demographics and also focus mostly on the practical aspects such as how large demographic trends will influence... Read more
Published on March 6, 2006 by George Bernwanger
2.0 out of 5 stars poor.
Wattenberg introduces an idea of enormous interest and scope and it was an interesting book to read in sense of topic and debate. Read more
Published on February 12, 2006 by J. Hodder
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews





Forums

There are no discussions about this product yet.
Be the first to discuss this product with the community.
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 





Look for Similar Items by Category