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After the Spike

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

An eye-opening exploration of humanity’s unprecedented path to global depopulation and why it's in everyone's interests to prevent it

IIf we continue as we are, with birth rates falling globally, the world’s human population will peak in the next few decades – and then begin a sudden and rapid decline. It would be easy to think that fewer people would be better: better for the planet, better for the people who remain. In After the Spike, two leading population economists ask us to think again.

Carefully weighing the evidence and the many claims that surround this controversial subject, Dean Spears and Mike Geruso explain why depopulation is not the solution we urgently need for the climate crisis, nor will it improve lives. Far more likely is that the progress which has raised living standards so dramatically over the last two centuries will slow or even reverse. As humanity’s future shrinks, it will become more fragile and less certain, and harder for us to escape from global poverty, disease and injustice.

Halting this decline and stabilising the population need not mean sacrificing a greener future or reverting to past gender inequities. In fact, they argue, it can only be achieved with women’s reproductive rights and individual choice as driving forces. But if we want future generations to enjoy lives even better than our own, it’s time to take seriously society’s collective task of lifting the burdens of parents and other carers.

Deeply reasoned and uncompromisingly humane, After the Spike sheds important light on a dramatic shift in the human story and asks us to consider what future we should want for our planet, our children, and one another.

© Dean Spears and Michael Geruso 2025 (P) Simon and Schuster LLC 2025

Critics Review

Persuasive ... After the Spike knocks down assumptions like skittles … Creating a good life, whether that's finding cures for disease or ways to reverse environmental damage, relies on the ideas, work and progress produced by large, interconnected societies … If there's one thing After the Spike leaves us with, it's the impulse to back ourselves
Guardian
If you think that the world’s population isn’t going to fall, or that it will be easy to halt its fall, or that a falling population is a good thing, you really should read it
New Scientist
We should welcome After the Spike. It is a brisk and accessible outline of the basic facts of the demographic precipice on the edge of which mankind currently stands
Literary Review
After the Spike provides a clear and comprehensively argued overview of why birth rates are so low, and why most government interventions have failed to raise them
Observer
A punchy read
Sunday Times
With stunning clarity, Spears and Geruso show why our assumptions about population, progress and prosperity are leading us astray. If you want to understand where humanity is going, and why that matters, this book is essential reading
Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive
Fascinating, thoughtful and timely. In ten years, everyone will be talking about global demographic decline and what to do about it
Simon Johnson, Nobel Laureate in Economics
Spears and Geruso take us by the hand to understand the most dramatic period of human history – and what could happen next. The insights and rigour – which come thick and fast – are matched by human and empathetic narrative throughout
Hannah Ritchie, author of Not the End of the World
Spears and Geruso meticulously take apart all the myths and confusion surrounding the incoming demographic changes for our species. I had my mind blown over and over and over
Zach Weinersmith, co-author of A City on Mars
A remarkable blend of empirical research and philosophical argument that has challenged, and changed, my thinking about population
Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation
Author Dean Spears and Michael Geruso
Narrator Sean Patrick Hopkins
Duration 9 hours and 15 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781529964264
Format Audiobook
Publisher Random House
Genre Age groups and generations, Popular economics, Population and demography
Availability AU, GB, IE

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