Barry Austin

Population Studies: Birthrates Are Declining. For the Earth — and a Lot of People — That’s Not a Bad Thing

I worked in Japan for a year as a journalist for TIME in 2006 and ’07, and here’s what I realized: the Japanese do everything first. Camera phones, Zen Buddhism, little fuel-efficient cars, huge public debt, a stagnant economy, the literary acceptance of comic books — what happens first in Japan eventually makes its way to the rest [...]

Population: Is the World Ready for 7 Billion People?

Some time late in 2011—at least according to the people-crunchers at the U.N. Population Reference Bureau—humanity will reach a new demographic milestone with the birth of the 7th billion living person. (As a measure of just how fast global population is growing, the 6th billionth living person—Bosnian Adnan Nevic—is only 11.) You can expect the [...]