How did a civilisation that once seemed destined to grow forever begin to shrink?

The Demography of the West opens on the Swan coastal plain — three displacements that are not the same story: First Nations dispossession, a settler family priced out of Fremantle, and a Perth suburb reshaped after the pandemic by migration, housing pressure, and birth rates below replacement. From that human scale, Nathan Webb widens the lens to Western Europe, North America, and Oceania.

This is narrative history, not a prophecy of doom. The West changed gradually — through mechanisation and the McCormick reaper; through suffrage and the politics of autonomy; through the pill and the demographic shock that followed; through falling fertility, aging populations, and workforces that now depend on immigration to sustain what native-born populations no longer produce.

Webb traces how the West rose on population, productivity, and shared belief — and how that triad has frayed. Christianity persists but no longer defines the centre. Cities grow rich and crowded at once. The West’s share of world population has fallen sharply. Empty playgrounds, he argues, are not policy failures alone; they ask whether a society still believes in tomorrow.

Demography is not destiny, but direction — the boundary within which culture, policy, and courage operate. In closing, Webb turns to artificial intelligence: will new technology substitute for human presence, or support the families and communities no algorithm can replace?

Written with a Perth eye and civilisational scope, this book is for readers who want to understand the forces reshaping their street and their world — without panic or complacency. The West is not dying. It is undecided.

Nathan Leon Webb

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