If current world population trends were to continue, human numbers could more than double to 13 billion people by the end of this century. Given humanity's consumerist trends, with resulting global warming and the overall impact on vulnerable biodiversity and habitat, this would be ecologically disastrous! No Vacancy is that rare chronicle of sobering optimism in a world more accustomed to thinking about population as a dilemma with little hope of positive change. Family planning expert Bob Gillespie and renowned global ecologist, author and film director Michael Tobias journeyed the world in search of answers. This book reveals an exquisite window on remarkable events occurring in country after country where Tobias and Gillespie discovered changes that have resulted in smaller family sizes and the empowerment of women and children, while creating critical pathways towards ecological sustainability. From Iran, Mexico, Ghana and Nigeria, to countries across Western Europe, as well as the U.S., India, and Indonesia, No Vacancy paints an emotional, at times provocative, portrait of a global transformation; a fertility transition that may well prove to be one of the most important-and timely-ingredients in humanity's survival and the continuation of life on Earth. Book jacket.

This book addresses nine relevant questions: Will population growth reduce the growth rate of per capita income because it reduces the per capita availability of exhaustible resources? How about for renewable resources? Will population growth aggravate degradation of the natural environment? Does more rapid growth reduce worker output and consumption? Do rapid growth and greater density lead to productivity gains through scale economies and thereby raise per capita income? Will rapid population growth reduce per capita levels of education and health? Will it increase inequality of income distribution? Is it an important source of labor problems and city population absorption? And, finally, do the economic effects of population growth justify government programs to reduce fertility that go beyond the provision of family planning services?