Baby bust

Abstract

Despite the persistence of Malthusian arguments that human population will grow to outstrip the Earth’s capacity and resources, current demography actually foretells the impending end of growth in the next half century. We are approaching a global baby bust. What does this mean for global political labor economies, regional resource economics, and local struggles over gender and power? This paper concludes, through a survey of current research, that geographers already have the conceptual equipment to answer these enormously important questions. We further argue that the fundamental underpinnings of much contemporary economic and social theory, having been developed in times of rapid population growth and labor surplus, must be reconsidered as we enter a period of different material conditions. Reviewing recent developments in population geography and feminist geopolitics, global geographies of labor and aging, and emerging patterns of resource intensification and disintensification, we suggest that – if infused with an explicit political economy – attending to the baby bust can show the way forward to help revitalize our understanding of bodies and materiality in critical and human geography.