19th De Jong Lecture in Social Demography to be held on Oct. 15

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State’s 19th annual De Jong Lecture in Social Demography will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 9 a.m.–noon in the HUB-Robeson Center Room 233B and on Zoom. “The World’s Population May Peak in Your Lifetime. What Happens Next?” will be presented by Dean Spears.

Spears is an associate professor of economics from the University of Texas – Austin (UT-Austin), a visiting economist at the Economics and Planning Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute in Delhi, is a founding Executive Director of r.i.c.e., and is an affiliate of IZA and of the Climate Futures Initiative at Princeton University. At UT-Austin, he is an affiliate of the Population Research Center, the South Asia Institute, and Innovations for Peace and Development. His research areas include the health, growth, and survival of children, particularly in India; the environment, air pollution, and climate change; and population dimensions of social well-being.

The lecture will focus on the likelihood of long-term depopulation if global average birth rates fall below two, and how the public and policymakers should evaluate the prospect of widespread, shared depopulation. Spears will also discuss how stabilization at some population size or another would be better or worse than depopulation, and what a response to depopulation from governments, philanthropies or society should be.

Ashton Verdery, associate professor of sociology and demography and an associate in the Population Research Institute at Penn State, and Megan Sweeney, professor of sociology at UCLA, will participate as discussants. Graduate students and post-doctoral students are invited to a lunch meeting with presenters following the lecture.

This event is free and open to everyone. Register online to participate in person or via Zoom. The lecture will be recorded and available to registered participants.

The De Jong Lecture is supported by the Gordon F. and Caroline M. De Jong Lectureship in Social Demography Endowment, administered jointly and supplemented by the College of Liberal Art’s Department of Sociology and Criminology and the Population Research Institute at Penn State.