Does the world have too many people – or not enough? That’s the big question demographer Paul Morland addressed when he came to Intelligence Squared to discuss the themes of his new book Tomorrow’s People: The Future of Humanity in Ten Numbers. The countries of West Africa are about to experience the greatest population explosion ever, due to a tendency towards large families combined with falling infant mortality. But elsewhere in places like Italy and Japan, the low birth-rate and rising life expectancy are creating the oldest populations in history. Just as the Medes and Visigoths are no more, could the Italian and Japanese peoples one day disappear? 

In conversation with political scientist scientist Eric Kaufmann, Morland explored how, just as the great geographical movements of peoples forged our past, so the patterns of mass migration are shaping our future – radically changing the cultural, ethnic and religious composition of many societies across the globe and in some places provoking a populist reaction that can be observed from Brexit to the rise of Donald Trump. 

Discover the power of demography to help us understand the global shifts that are transforming our world.