Book Review: No One Left: Why The World Needs More Children by Paul Morland

Noemi Cselik

The most common perception of the human population is that we are overpopulating, leading to an environmental catastrophe. When the problem of low birth rates is mentioned, it is automatically assumed that it only affects developed Western countries, or at least only white people. But the demographic crisis is going global. It affects countries with large populations such as India and China, and even in Africa the total fertility rate is stagnating at a high level only in some parts, while over most of the continent it is already falling. Japan is known to have a high proportion of people living to a ripe old age, but it is also one of the world's most ageing societies. The demographic outlook for South Korea is bleak, and if the trend is not reversed, within three generations the country will have shrunk to just over ten per cent of its current population. This tendency will lead to fewer and fewer people of working age for every person over 65 in ageing societies, which in the long run will cause serious economic problems, increasing public debt, labour shortages, and pension payment crisis, which, combined with the current levels of inflation, could even lead to the total collapse of states and subsequent wars, and the spread of extremist ideas such as communism or fascism.

But how did we get here? The birth rate in developed countries, which was high until the early 20th century, began to fall dramatically in the second half of the century and has continued to fall ever since. Although advances in medicine and education, as well as technological advances, have increased living standards and life expectancy, traditional family planning and childbearing patterns have changed in parallel or as a consequence, with the emphasis shifting from family life to individual career development and financial goals.

In order to maintain the population of developed countries, a birth rate of slightly more than two is required, which means that the majority of women of childbearing age would have to give birth to more than two children. This has not been the case for some time, and surprisingly not primarily because of a declining desire to have children. Surveys in any part of the world show that people are planning to have more children than are being born later. Morland explains this phenomenon, which was initially limited to developed countries but has now taken on global proportions, in two ways: firstly as a symptom of modernity and secularisation, for which there is no quick fix precisely because of its cultural and historical context, and secondly as the trigger of a crisis that will have an impact over generations and fundamentally reshape the societies and economies of our world.

Population decline is the result of a slow process over three generations. The first phase is characterised by the fertility rate of the active generation falling below the two-point threshold, i.e. couples have fewer children than they need to replace themselves. If this happens with a more numerous generation, the total population will continue to grow for some time. In the second phase, the smaller number of generations replacing the parent generation will also have fewer children than necessary to keep the population constant, i.e. the number of deaths will exceed the number of births. In the third phase, the absolute population will begin to decline despite the large influx of immigrants that is typical of Western countries at this time. This situation will worsen and easily continue if smaller families, fewer children or childlessness become the social norm. It may also worsen if members of the active generation have to care for their elderly parents, further limiting their own willingness or ability to have children. Morland concludes that the only solution is to increase the birth rate of the active generation, which, due to the imbalance between deaths and births, can only stabilise and then reverse the declining trend over at least three generations.

In the second half of the book, Morland analyses the most common objections and misconceptions about global demographics and childbearing. Foremost among these is the now commonplace assertion that overpopulation will lead to the destruction of the planet. In fact, there is no set number for how many people the planet can feed without destroying nature, but it varies dynamically according to the state of technological development. In other words, there is always the possibility of steering agricultural research and development in a direction that allows more food to be produced through the introduction of environmentally friendly technologies, for example. However, to ensure such progress and innovation, we need large, healthy and vibrant young generations.

Mass migration, a common practise in Western countries, does not provide a long-term solution to declining population numbers, as the total fertility rate in most emigration countries is already on the decline. The mass emigration of people of working age from these countries further exacerbates this, leading to a demographic crisis, and the immigrants' own fertility rate also begins to decline as soon as they arrive in their destination country.

Many people hope that AI will provide a solution to the coming global demographic winter, while others believe that the accelerated rise of AI will mean that there will be fewer people on Earth as traditional human jobs and lifestyles disappear. According to Morland, we have not yet reached the level and stability of AI and robotisation where we can safely afford to even slow down human population growth, let alone the absolute population decline that is currently looming. Artificial intelligence currently only makes certain processes easier, but there is no short-term prospect of rapid progress that would make human doctors or nurses, for example, replaceable.

On the issue of women's rights, Morland emphasises that feminism and natalism are not mutually exclusive, but can complement each other and create life models for women in which successful careers and motherhood can go hand in hand and offer more freedom than ever before for true self-realisation. To have more children, we need more happy, vibrant women.

There is also an opinion that although Morland's book is a clear and interesting treatise on a complex problem that is not fully understood by the public at large, it does not offer a "solution", i.e. a scientific - technical magic wand that would solve the problem in one fell swoop. The reason for this is simple: there is none. Solving the problem remains a human endeavour and the effects can only unfold over human lifetimes. According to Morland, we need to rediscover the joy of starting a family and create a cultural environment and social discourse that encourages more people to start a family and have children at a younger age. In order to achieve this, pro-natalist policies and consistent, long-term support from governments in the areas of economics, law and education are essential. In this context, in Chapter 9 of the book, the author discusses the Hungarian government's family policy stance and measures to date as a positive example to follow and contrasts them with those of the United Kingdom, for example, where the problem of population decline is only mentioned in passing. However, such a reform can only be achieved with forward-looking methods. The aim should therefore not be a return to the outdated traditional family model, but the creation of a new order based on true equality between women and men, where parenthood enjoys the same respect as motherhood and where both men and women can develop their careers and parenting roles by taking on equal roles in child rearing.

Who is Paul Morland?

Paul Morland, one of the UK's foremost experts on global demographic trends, is a Fellow of the University of London and Senior Fellow at St Antony's College, University of Oxford. He is the author of four books to date, which have been translated into nine languages, Population Strategies in Ethnic Conflict (2014), The Human Tide: How Population Shaped the Modern World (2019), Tomorrow's People: The Future of Humanity in Ten Numbers (2022) and No One Left: Why The World Needs More Children (2024).

Paul Morland spent eight days in Hungary in November 2024 at the invitation of the Institute for Youth Studies. He gave several interviews and public lectures at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium centres in Budapest, Szeged, Pécs and Debrecen and took part in panel discussions with local experts.