Could smaller families 'rewild' the planet — and make humans happier?

[Louise Mitchell]

Could smaller families 'rewild' the planet — and make humans happier?

https://www.npr.org/2025/11/01/nx-s1-5551126/population-climate-families-children?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

Here are a few excerpts:

Davis, who works for an organization called the Rewilding Institute, says the pivot toward fewer people is allowing landscapes like this one to heal.

"I have a perhaps unpopular view on human population, I believe we are too many and we consume too much," he said. "We need to encourage a small family ethic, especially among affluent people."

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Starkey works with a group called Population Connection that advocates in favor of policies that support this shift toward smaller families and gradual depopulation.

According to Starkey, fewer people will mean a healthier environment, but she also thinks the trend is good news for humans.

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Many experts are voicing deep concerns about this population shift. They say it's not clear how economies and family structures that have relied for decades on steady growth will function as communities age and begin to decline.

"I think this has huge implications for which we're not prepared as a society," said Martina Yopo-Díaz, a sociologist at the Catholic University in Santiago, Chile, who studies population loss, in a July interview with NPR.

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Claudia Goldin, an economist at Harvard University, said fears about declining population are overblown. She says there's evidence people are happier when free to decide for themselves if and when to have kids.

"To have the number of children they want to have, and to have them at the right time in their lives, is certainly a benefit to couples," she said.

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One question is how to fund the social safety net and healthcare for rising numbers of elderly, when there are fewer young people. John Davis says he doesn't have answers to all those challenges but he's hopeful people will find ways to navigate this transition.

"If the smartest young minds in the world were dedicated to figuring how a declining population could support its elders, we would achieve that goal," he said. "I think we'd have a happier world, for people and wildlife."

[Fred Jennings]

There were two groups with which I was familiar during the 1970s and 1980s: Zero Population Growth (ZPG) and Negative Population Growth (NPG). The latter seems still to exist; the former has apparently changed its name to Population Connection, to which you refer.

These concerns have been with us for a very long time. In this regard, I think of Malthus' views, which I used to call "Malthusiasm"...

Fred

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