"Europe Is About to Fall off a Demographic Cliff."
So is nearly everybody else. The EU does have a serious demographic problem. Unlike the United States -- whose population is projected to increase to 400 million by 2050 -- the EU's population is projected to increase from 504 million now to 525 million in 2035, but thereafter to decline gradually to 517 million in 2060, according to Europe's official statistical office. The problem is particularly acute in Germany, today the EU's largest member state, which has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Under current projections, its population could fall from 82 million to 65 million by 2060.
Europe's population is also aging. This year, the EU's working-age population will start falling from 308 million and is projected to drop to 265 million in 2060. That's expected to increase the old-age dependency ratio (the number of over-65s as a proportion of the total working-age population) from 28 percent in 2010 to 58 percent in 2060. Such figures can lead to absurd predictions of civilizational extinction. As one Guardian pundit put it, "With each generation reproducing only half its number, this looks like the start of a continent-wide collapse in numbers. Some predict wipeout by 2100."
Demographic woes are not, however, something unique to Europe. In fact, nearly all the world's major powers are aging -- and some more dramatically than Europe. China is projected to go from a population with a median age of 35 to 43 by 2030, and Japan will go from 45 to 52. Germany will go from 44 to 49. But Britain will go from 40 to just 42 -- a rate of aging comparable to that of the United States, one of the powers with the best demographic prospects.
So sure, demography will be a major headache for Europe. But the continent's most imperiled countries have much that's hopeful to learn from elsewhere in Europe. France and Sweden, for example, have reversed their falling birth rates by promoting maternity (and paternity) rights and child-care facilities. In the short term, the politics may be complicated, but immigration offers the possibility of mitigating both the aging and shrinking of Europe's population -- so-called decline aside, there is no shortage of young people who want to come to Europe. In the medium term, member states could also increase the retirement age -- another heavy political lift but one that many are now facing. In the long term, smart family-friendly policies such as child payments, tax credits, and state-supported day care could encourage Europeans to have more children. But arguably, Europe is already ahead of the rest of the world in developing solutions to the problem of an aging society. The graying Chinese should take note.
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