Vegard Skirbekk is a social scientist studying how global demographic change is reshaping health, economies, and society. He is co-founder of the Centre for Fertility and Health and is a professor at the University of Oslo. He is the author of Decline and Prosper: Changing Global Birth Rates and the Advantages of Fewer Children.
Guri Rørtveit is a physician and public health researcher, and director general of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. She is a doctor and professor of family medicine at the University of Bergen.
We discuss:
Are we in the midst of a demographic emergency or a new phase of history we don’t yet understand?
Why do interventions to increase fertility rarely work?
Why Japan might do better with its old age dependency ratio compared to a country such as India.
Will the Norwegian population disappear around the year 3200?
We discuss some of the depopulation doomer anxieties: no more Einsteins to innovate, no more taxpayers to take care of elderly, reliance on immigration to steady population levels, etc.
Why are men more reluctant to visit the doctor than women?
Richard Reeves, Of Boys and Men: “redshirting”
Guri recommends:
Vegard recommends:
