The relative amounts of stars and interstellar matter in the local Milky Way

This paper considers the balance between star formation and mass loss from evolved stars in the region within 1 kpc of the sun. There is considerably more mass in stars than in the interstellar medium, and more material is being incorporated into new stars than is being returned by evolved stars. In the simplest interpretation of the data, it appears that unless there is some infall of new interstellar gas, the era of substantial star formation out of interstellar gas will be over in a few (perhaps 3) billion years.