We’re About to See the Biggest Demographic Shift Since the Black Death

Not since the 1300s, when the world’s population imploded due to the bubonic plague, have we faced a demographic downsizing of the magnitude projected for the century ahead. Many observers predict the global population will peak in the coming decades, with estimates ranging from 2053 to the late 2070s or 2080s, before entering a period of decline.

Wait a minute! you may be thinking. Wasn’t it just 50 years ago that experts warned about overpopulation? And don’t we hear constant talk of the world’s population boom? Yes, but as Peter Zeihan explains in The End of the World Is Just the Beginning, today’s population swell is partly due to increasing life spans.

The Age of Depopulation

Nicholas Eberstadt’s recent essay for Foreign Affairs, “The Age of Depopulation,” chronicles the startling collapse in global fertility rates, which have fallen to half what they were in the 1960s. “More and more societies are heading into an era of pervasive and indefinite depopulation,” he writes. East Asia, for instance, “tipped into depopulation in 2021,” while Latin America and parts of the Middle East now face subreplacement fertility rates also. Even countries once thought immune due to cultural or religious traditions, such as Iran and Turkey, are on a similar trajectory. Unless you live in sub-Saharan Africa, you likely reside in a country with subreplacement fertility—a trend accelerating in recent years.

What’s behind this decline in childbearing? Eberstadt points to a “revolution in family formation.” Across the globe, we see “the ‘flight from marriage,’ with people getting married at later ages or not at all; the spread of nonmarital cohabitation . . . and the increase in homes in which one person lives independently—in other words, alone.” This seismic cultural shift means fewer children and smaller, more fragile families.

As families wither, the desire for autonomy, self-actualization, and convenience rises. In this atmosphere, children are “quintessentially inconvenient” and big families become cultural outliers. It’s true that religious belief can stem the tide by encouraging marriage and celebrating children, but only up to a point, because family formation and religious participation are intertwined in counterintuitive ways. (See Mary Eberstadt’s How the West Really Lost God for the provocative thesis that secularism is a result of family breakdown, not always its cause.)

The Age of the Aged

The world’s depopulation will unleash a cascade of social consequences. The collapse of fertility means, according to Nicholas Eberstadt, “fewer workers, savers, taxpayers, renters, home buyers, entrepreneurs, innovators, inventors . . . and voters.” What’s more, by 2050, there will be more people over the age of 80 than children in some countries. He writes,

We’re entering an era of profound social and economic challenges, a wildly different context marked by the thinning out of younger generations and the swelling ranks of older people with increasing life spans.

Depopulation and the Church

What will these developments mean for the global church and our mission?

1. We’ll have to reckon with an aging society in the days ahead.

The recent State of the Great Commission Report released before the Fourth Lausanne Congress highlights the extensive needs of an aging population and lays out opportunities for the church to step into the gap. We’ll need to shift our attention from seeing older believers as merely the recipients of care and attention to engaging them as colaborers in their extended years of good health and ministry. From supporting multigenerational families to pushing back against trends of isolation and loneliness to offering spiritual formation and ministry opportunities for the elderly, we’ll need to find ways to minister to and alongside older believers.

2. The depopulation crisis calls for a renewed commitment to strengthening marriages, supporting families, and celebrating children.

In a world that prizes autonomy and convenience, the church can model a different way—a way of sacrificial love, covenantal commitment, and the beauty of generational faithfulness.

It’s true the “nones” are on the rise in the West, but globally, Pew Research Forum predicts “secular” people in 2060 will make up a smaller percentage of the world’s population than they do today, mainly because of demographic trends. Eric Kaufmann’s book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? claims the future will belong not to secular elites but to grassroots communities marked by deep faith.

Ross Douthat, longtime observer of demographic trends, thinks countries that keep or boost their birthrates close to replacement level will have an edge over countries whose rates continue to plunge. And even within countries where fertility is collapsing, regions that buck the trend will become outliers with outsize cultural influence: “To predict the most dynamic American states and cities, the most influential religious traditions and ideologies,” he writes, “look for places and groups that are friendliest not just to the young but to young people having kids themselves.”

3. The depopulation crisis will require more ministry to and alongside singles.

In a world with more single-person households and fewer people with extended family ties, the church will need to step in as the family of God by providing friendship in a world of isolation, and new support systems for people strained by economic or social pressures. Ministry in this world will not overlook but assume the presence of singles (and not as second-class citizens in God’s kingdom).

You might feel tension between points 2 and 3, and understandably so. Figuring out how to gently encourage marriage and childbearing among Christian young people while also supporting and cherishing those called to singleness (whether temporarily or for a lifetime)—knowing where and when to put which emphasis—will not be easy or obvious. Some will resolve the tension by falling down on one side of that line or the other, and that’s what we see in most churches today, an either-or that doesn’t incorporate the whole body of Christ.

If we make it seem as if marriage and family represent the only faithful way of life, we’ll leave out large swaths of the unfolding mission field made up of aging single seniors. And if we downplay marriage and family life, even though it has been the norm for most people throughout history, we may wind up contributing to the demographic trends on the horizon instead of resisting them. We mustn’t hobble ourselves during a time when we need all Christians with different passions, gifts, and callings mobilized to address the needs before us.

Looking Forward

The demographic challenges ahead are immense. The solution isn’t to merely decry the reasons for the demographic decline, as if we’re chastisers of the culture we’re called to serve. No, we walk forward in faith, knowing that the church has faced significant changes in the past.

Our hope isn’t in birth rates or demographic trends but in the Lord of the harvest. Fulfilling the Great Commission is the only way to ensure the continued presence of vibrant, resilient Christian communities that disciple and send out believers to live as salt and light in a depopulating world.

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