Europe's Population at a Turning Point

Abstract

Europe has just entered a critical phase of its demographic evolution [HN1]. Around the year 2000, the population began to generate “negative momentum”: a tendency to decline owing to shrinking cohorts of young people that was brought on by low fertility (birthrate) over the past three decades. Currently, the effect of negative momentum on future population is small. However, each additional decade that fertility remains at its present low level will imply a further decline in the European Union (EU) of 25 to 40 million people, in the absence of offsetting effects from immigration [HN2] or rising life expectancy. Governments in Europe are beginning to consider a range of policy options to address the negative implications of population decline and rapid aging (1, 2). Social policies and labor laws aimed at halting the further increase in the mean age of childbearing—which contributes to low fertility—have substantial scope for affecting future demographic trends. They also have an additional health rationale because of the increasing health risks associated with childbearing in older women.

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