Episode · EconTalk · 2026-10-12
Books mentioned on The Great Fertility Collapse (with Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde)
For the first time in human history, we're not having enough children to keep the world's population from falling. And fertility is collapsing fastest not in rich nations but in places like Colombia, Thailand, and Guatemala, upending decades of economic wisdom.
Russ Roberts recommended The ultimate resource by Julian Lincoln Simon, and discussed Terra Incognita by Rodney Broome.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Terra Incognita
Discussed“Our topic for today is fertility and demography, based on a recent paper he wrote, he co-authored with Patrick Norick, and that paper is Terra Incognita, the Economics of a Shrinking World, a paper I found, to be honest, shocking in its claims, but the claims are mostly facts.”
Where to get it
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The ultimate resource
The ultimate resource by Julian Lincoln Simon is a foundational book exploring the relationship between human population growth, economic abundance, and technological progress.
Recommended“I want to close with a tribute to Julian Simon. Yeah. Julian Simon's book, The Ultimate Resource, which I recommend to listeners, we haven't talked much about that over the years on this show, but you point out in a recent paper that in 1960, South Korea had a little over a million births.”
Where to get it
