Dean Spears, associate professor of economics at the University of Texas-Austin, will be presenting the 19th annual De Jong Lecture in Social Demography on Oct. 15, 9 a.m.-noon, in the HUB-Robeson Center Room 233B and on Zoom.
Spears talk, “The World’s Population May Peak in Your Lifetime. What Happens Next?”, will address the potential for long-term depopulation as birth rates decrease globally. Spears will also assess if population stabilization is a better course of action and what steps governments and charitable organizations should take in preparation for this scenario.
Spears is 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.
With Diane Coffey, Spears is the author of the award-winning book “Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development, and the Costs of Caste.”
Discussants include Megan Sweeney, professor of sociology, UCLA; and Ashton Verdery, associate professor of sociology and demography, Penn State.
The event is free and open to the public. Registration is required for attending in-person and virtually. A recording will be available after the event for a limited time.
The De Jong Lecture is supported by the Gordon F. and Caroline M. De Jong Lectureship in SocialDemography Endowment, administered jointly and supplemented by the Department of Sociology andCriminology and the Population Research Institute at Penn State.