Acknowledgments -- Lessons from demography -- Introduction -- "The wonderful, terrible, inscrutable economy" -- Historical change, economic behavior, and demographics -- The demographic portrait -- Generation X and the effects of population change -- What this portrait tells us -- Implications...

"For much of its history, human population growth increased at a glacial pace. The demographic rate only soared about 200 years ago, climaxing in the period 1950-2000. In that 50-year span, the population grew more than it had in the previous 5000 years. Though these raw numbers are impressive,...