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Introduction

Okay, the title is clumsy: demographics are the details of a group of people, so they always relate to one population or another.  When you consider the demographics of a population, you are often looking to see how they change with time.

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, apart from the constant threat of nuclear war, most people believed that the most significant threat to the human race came from the 'population time-bomb' - the problems caused by overpopulation and the increasing impact of an increasing number of humans, many of who are getting increasingly rich and consuming increasing amounts of food and other resources.  Many books were written on the subject, such as the massively successful The Population Bomb.

The predictions were wrong: people are getting (on average) richer, they are eating more, but they are having (again, on average) fewer children.  Today, most of the world has a birthrate which is below the replacement level: we have populations which are ageing, with increasing numbers of pensioners and decreasing numbers of working age people to support them.  And we have an economic system which relies on continual growth to sustain it.  In other words, we know a massive change is coming: either we respond quickly and appropriately, or human civilization will fall to pieces.  For an accessible introduction, see Haunted by the Future, a 14 minute talk by Stephen Shaw.

This is not to suggest that Climate Change is less important than population decline, but both are existential threats to civilization, and it makes no sense to address only one.