The world’s richest man and the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk has donated $10 million to a fertility and population research project called Population Wellbeing Initiative (PWI), according to a report by Bloomberg (paywalled).
According to Business Insider, the money was given by The Musk Foundation to the University of Texas at Austin in 2021. The PWI is a joint project of the University’s Population Research Center and its economics department. Through its research, it looks into fertility, the future of population, and economic growth.
A paper produced by the PWI and co-written by its director includes a projection that, based on declining fertility rates, “humanity is four-fifths over,” and without a reversal it’s possible “that humanity depopulates with cruelty.“
The paper also opens with a quote from Will MacAskill – a prominent espouser of effective altruism, a philosophy that emphasizes focusing on long-term problems and was famously backed by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
Musk funded a two-day PWI conference last October, but the group didn’t disclose the billionaire’s involvement to the academics who flew in from across the country, according to Bloomberg.
The 52-year-old billionaire Musk has fathered 10 children from 3 women and has previously shared that population collapse could end humanity.
In July 2022, Musk on X (formerly Twitter) posted “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.” as he fathered twins with a top executive at his brain-implant company Neuralink.
