Europe is in the Grip of a Birth Rate Crisis
by Will Jones, Daily Sceptic:
Across Europe, births have been below the replacement level for decades, leading to ageing societies that increasingly struggle to support their elderly populations and maintain a good standard of living. Polly Dunbar has been looking at the worrying statistics and what’s behind them in the Telegraph.
Recently, an apocalyptic phrase has been uttered over and over again by Italy’s political class: “demographic winter”. Almost every year since 1993, deaths in the country have outstripped births, causing a slow-motion crisis which has gradually reached critical mass.
Italy’s fertility rate is dropping so precipitously that by 2070, the population – currently 59 million – is forecast to fall by almost 12 million to 47.2 million.
The situation threatens to push the world’s eighth-largest economy into an ‘economic dark age’, without a workforce capable of funding its welfare state and the pensions of its older citizens.
In fact, the picture across the whole of Europe’s population is bleak, with ominous implications for economic growth as well as pensions, healthcare and social services.
It is an ageing continent: by 2050, the share of people over 65 will rise to around 30% from around 20% today, says the European Commission.
And we’re not immune here, either. In Britain, the birth rate is at a record low. There were 605,479 live births in England and Wales last year, down 3.1% from 624,828 in 2021 – and the lowest number since 2002.
Almost a third of those births were to women born outside the U.K. The ONS has predicted that the U.K.’s natural population will start to decline in 2025, at which point there will be more deaths than births. …
The fertility rate has changed markedly across European countries in the past two decades. Between 2001 and 2021, it decreased in 11 of the 27 EU member states. Even France, the EU country with the highest fertility rate, recorded only 1.84 live births per woman, well below the magic number of 2.1 which demographers consider the benchmark of what’s needed to keep the population stable (called the substitution index.)
According to the EU’s Eurostat agency, Portugal, at 1.35, is projected to be the European country with the smallest proportion of children by 2050, with just 11.5% of the population expected to be under the age of 15.
Surveys show both men and women in Europe wish they had more children. There are many reasons they do not, including the trend towards starting a family later, but perhaps the biggest driving factor is economic uncertainty.
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