Economic stagnation, mass migration, or have more children - this is the choice facing societies across the world.

Young people are choosing not to have children. They even feel this is a moral responsibility. This has become common across the developed world, and yet we fail to fully understand that demography is destiny. Our economic and social futures will be directly shaped by the health of our families and the decisions that young people make about having children.

In our latest ARC off-stage conversation Philip Pilkington, Paul Morland, Eric Kaufman and Miriam Cates break these themes down.

They explore Pilkington and Morland’s ground-breaking research which shows that countries which fail to reverse demographic collapse are left with the bleak choice of economic stagnation or unsustainable mass migration.

“In Western politics”, Miriam says, “demography is the elephant in the room… The Right want lower taxes, the Left want more spending, but the truth is that we can’t have lower taxes or more spending if we don’t have a workforce! … This has nothing to do with politics or ideology, these are just the facts.”

“The only path to a thriving society”, Pilkington and Morland write in their paper, “lies in being prepared to have significantly more children than people in the United Kingdom, and much of the rest of the world, have had for decades.”

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We hope you enjoy this conversation about one of the most important questions of our time.

Go Deeper: Read Philip Pilkington and Paul Morland’s paper forms the basis of this discussion - ‘Migration, Stagnation, or Procreation: Quantifying the Demographic Trilemma’