I have a five-part series (here, here, here, here, and here) explaining that demographic decline will lead to fiscal crisis. The main takeaway is that entitlement programs are a ticking time bomb, and I castigate politicians who want to kick the can down the road (or make a bad situation even worse). This is a global problem, not merely an American problem, as […]
I often get asked when the United States will suffer a Greek-style fiscal crisis. My answer is always “I don’t know,” though I freely admit we are heading in that direction. My lack of specificity isn’t merely because economists are lousy forecasters. I tell people it’s all about investor sentiment, and it’s hard to know […]
A fair number of countries have decided to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state (the U.N. can’t as it requires Security-Council approval, and the U.S. is on that council). This has had little effect as simple declarations like this have no force in international law (see reference to Natasha Hausdorff below). Now, however, another state […]
I recently argued that self-reports understate the personality gender gap. As long as some men rate their personalities relative to the average male, and some women rate their personalities relative to the average female, the gap the data reveal is less than the true gap. 798 more words
Japan must stop being overly optimistic about how quickly its population is going to shrink, economists have warned, as births plunge at a pace far ahead of core estimates. Japan this month said there were a total of 686,000 Japanese births in 2024, falling below 700,000 for the first time since records began in the […]
John Tyler was born in 1790 – 235 years ago. He became the 10th President of the United States, yet his grandson has just died. He had 15 children between 1815 (when he was 25) and 1860 (when he was 70). He was President from 1841 to 1845. One of the 150 was Lyon Tyler […]
Regulations about abortion are often wildly controversial. But what effects to they actually have? Caitlin Myers addresses these issues in “From Roe to Dobbs: 50 Years of Cause and Effect of US State Abortion Regulations” (Annual Review of Public Health 2025, pp. 433-446). As a starting point, consider the years before and after the 1973 US Supreme Court…
Fertility rates are falling around the world, but Republic of Korea is the outlier, with a fertility rate of 0.72 in 2024. The International Monetary Fund, in its report on Korea’s economic situation (generally quite good), thought that Korea’s low fertility justified adding an “Annex” to its most recent report on Korea’s economy: “Addressing Korea’s…
In its most recent World Economic Outlook report, the IMF includes a chapter on “The Rise of the Silver Economy: Global Implications of Population Aging” (April 2025). Here are the big trends in a nutshell. The red line (measured on the right-hand axis) shows that the average age of the global poulation was about 27…
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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