Histological Findings in Androgenetic Alopecia
January 1996
in “
Springer eBooks
”
TLDR Balding doesn't reduce the number of hair follicles, it just makes them smaller.
The document "Histological Findings in Androgenetic Alopecia" from 1995 concluded that the process of balding does not result in a decrease in the number of hair follicles, but rather a reduction in their size, a phenomenon first termed "vellus transformation" by Uno et al. in 1969.