Fascinating, thoughtful, and timely. Spears and Geruso are ahead of the global conversation. In ten years, everyone will be talking about global demographic decline and what to do about it. Read this book before your friends and rivals figure out the importance of this topic. -- Simon Johnson, 2024 Nobel Laureate in Economics

With stunning clarity, Spears and Geruso show why our assumptions about population, progress, and prosperity are leading us astray. If you want to understand where humanity is going, and why that matters, this book is essential reading. -- Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Regret, When, and Drive

After the Spike is an important book. Demography is destiny; Spears and Geruso tell a surprising story and show us how to shape that destiny for a sustainable, flourishing world. -- Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America and author of “Why Women Still Can't Have It All”

Spears and Geruso have started an essential conversation on how humans might realistically address the vexing challenges of population change. -- – Booklist (starred review)

Spears and Geruso take us by the hand to understand the most dramatic period of human history-how a global population of millions became billions-but, importantly, what happens next. The insights and rigor-which come thick and fast-are matched by human and empathetic narrative. -- Hannah Ritchie, lead researcher at Our World in Data and author of Not the End of the World

After the Spike is a remarkable blend of empirical research and philosophical argument that has challenged, and changed, my thinking about population. I expect it will do the same for you. -- Peter Singer, author of The Life You Can Save and Animal Liberation

Dean Spears and Michael Geruso are economists, demographers and associate professors at the University of Texas at Austin. Spears is a founding executive director of r.i.c.e, a nonprofit that works to promote children’s health, growth and survival in rural India. Geruso served as a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Biden, where he advised on healthcare and population change. Their research on health, population, and climate change has been published in top peer-reviewed journals and featured in publications such as The New York Times, Economist and National Geographic.

Dr. Michael Geruso is an economic demographer, public economist, and associate professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin. From 2023 to 2024, he served as a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers, where he advised on issues of health and demography. He holds bachelor’s degrees in engineering, political science, and philosophy. He earned his PhD in economics from Princeton and completed postdoctoral work at Harvard prior to joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. Since 2014, he has served on the board of the Research Institute of Compassionate Economics (r.i.c.e.). He is an affiliate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and of the Population Research Center at UT-Austin. His work has been published in top peer