The Population Bust

From Kenya to Korea, we explore four key aspects of demography in four individual episodes: declining birth rates, ageing societies, pronatalism and migration.

The last 100 years have seen a boom in trade, prosperity and wealth across the world, at unprecedented rates in human history. As a species, we are now more wealthy, healthy, and less likely to be killed in conflict than ever before, despite the many horrors we see in the daily news cycle. This golden age we live in has run in tandem with an ever-expanding population; in the 1920s, there were only two billion people on the planet. A century later, that number has skyrocketed up to eight billion. Yet the increase of prosperity and people has come at a devastating price – global warming, the melting of the ice caps, an epidemic of plastic pollution and the mass destruction of the planet’s biodiversity are all intrinsically connected to population growth. More recently, however, the trend has begun to reverse. The watchful eyes of demographers have been drawn to data that reveal dwindling populations, ageing nations, and plummeting fertility rates.

But what are the universal truths behind the red-flag statistics? In this landmark series we explore the impacts of seismic population shifts in today’s world, told firsthand through the personal stories of everyday people from six different countries across Europe, Africa and East Asia.

Episode 1: Baby Doomers

Episode 2: Living in An Ageing World