An entertaining idea, but I don’t think we’re going to run out of people. Within even apparently-very-homogeneous populations, there are subpopulations that are, for a variety of reasons, more inclined to have more kids. The sorts of people that kids just “happen to” will become rarer as contraception precludes this, and the sorts of people who see children as a vital part of their lives will become more common[1].
A lot of people model the decline in birthrate as an iron law that will keep going forever, but it’s more that wanting kids wasn’t mercilessly selected for for most of our history and now it is.
Less happily, the sorts of people that don’t particularly want kids but struggle to properly operate contraception will also grow as a share of the total population.
An entertaining idea, but I don’t think we’re going to run out of people. Within even apparently-very-homogeneous populations, there are subpopulations that are, for a variety of reasons, more inclined to have more kids. The sorts of people that kids just “happen to” will become rarer as contraception precludes this, and the sorts of people who see children as a vital part of their lives will become more common[1].
A lot of people model the decline in birthrate as an iron law that will keep going forever, but it’s more that wanting kids wasn’t mercilessly selected for for most of our history and now it is.
Less happily, the sorts of people that don’t particularly want kids but struggle to properly operate contraception will also grow as a share of the total population.