Hidden Drivers of Population Decline

A White Paper on How Modern Health, Environmental, and Medical Risks Are Creating Empty Cradles

Hidden Drivers of Population Decline is a white paper–driven book that explains why today’s falling birth rates are not just about lifestyle, money, or “personal choice.” Instead, it shows how modern health, environmental, and medical risks are quietly creating empty cradles by removing future parents and children from the population long before they appear in official statistics.

Drawing on more than 45 years of residential and commercial inspections, environmental investigation, expert‑witness work, and research, Marko Vovk connects what happens inside real homes, buildings, and neighborhoods to the global story of declining fertility and shrinking generations. He details how chronic disease, powerful pharmaceuticals, medical errors, toxic indoor environments, polluted air and water, radiation, microplastics, “forever chemicals,” electronic pollution, and high‑risk social conditions all erode reproductive health, pregnancy outcomes, and life expectancy in ways most demographic models ignore.

This white paper is written for public‑health officials, environmental regulators, planners, legislators, and concerned citizens who need to see the full picture before designing long‑term population and family policy. It translates complex risk scenarios into clear, accessible language, showing how different bundles of hidden threats can move societies from slow, manageable decline toward much faster and harder‑to‑reverse population loss within a few generations.

Beyond sounding the alarm, Hidden Drivers of Population Decline outlines practical, actionable steps: tightening controls on fertility‑damaging chemicals and pollutants; improving indoor‑environment standards in homes, schools, and healthcare facilities; strengthening chronic‑disease prevention and oversight of high‑risk drugs and procedures; reducing preventable early deaths from overdose, suicide, and medical harm; improving the quality and transparency of fertility, mortality, and abortion data; and supporting realistic, resilient paths to family formation. Together, these measures offer a roadmap for leaders who want to confront empty cradles as a system‑wide warning—and still have time to change course.