Fertility rates have declined dramatically across almost all high-income countries over the past decades. In some countries, population growth is already negative and many more are projected to exhibit negative population growth in the coming decades. This has raised concerns about future economic prospects. Indeed, fully–endogenous and semi–endogenous growth models imply that a shrinking workforce would lead to declining income growth and, perhaps, even to stagnation. We include an endogenous quantity/quality trade-off between fertility and human capital accumulation in these models to assess the extent to which a declining number of people (i.e., workers) may be compensated by increasing education. We demonstrate that economic growth does not necessarily decline with population shrinkage: in many scenarios, human capital investment can offset demographic headwinds and sustain technological progress.