Population Bomb's core claim was about the instantaneous rate of reproduction. This is a complex stochastic process. It could drop to 0 overnight if people decide no more babies.
But population decline is easier to model mid term because you don't need to make almost any assumptions. The next 18 years of university intake are all already born and there ain't a lot of them. The only way for them is down.
Clearly, what's beyond that is hard to forecast, but even then making a pretty good forecast for the next 25 years only depends on forecasting births in the next 7 years.
Population Bomb's core claim was about the instantaneous rate of reproduction. This is a complex stochastic process. It could drop to 0 overnight if people decide no more babies.
But population decline is easier to model mid term because you don't need to make almost any assumptions. The next 18 years of university intake are all already born and there ain't a lot of them. The only way for them is down.
Clearly, what's beyond that is hard to forecast, but even then making a pretty good forecast for the next 25 years only depends on forecasting births in the next 7 years.