is Europe depopulating itself?

[Morgeruat]

America's "Europe problem" and Europe's "America problem" have been staple topics of transatlantic debate for the past several years. Political leaders, media commentators, and businessmen usually discuss those problems in terms of policy differences: differences over prosecuting the war on terrorism, differences over the role of the United Nations in world affairs, differences over the Kyoto Protocol on the global environment, differences over Iraq. The policy differences are real. Attempts to understand them in political, strategic, and economic terms alone will ultimately fail, however, because such explanations do not reach deeply enough into the human texture of contemporary Europe. To put the matter directly: Europe, and especially western Europe, is in the midst of a crisis of civilizational morale. The most dramatic manifestation of that crisis is not to be found in Europe's fondness for governmental bureaucracy or its devotion to fiscally shaky health care schemes and pension plans, in Europe's lagging economic productivity or in the appeasement mentality that some European leaders display toward Islamist terrorism. No, the most dramatic manifestation of Europe's crisis of civilizational morale is the brute fact that Europe is depopulating itself. Europe's below-replacement-level birthrates have created situations that would have been unimaginable when the 1940s and early 1950s. By the middle of this century, if present fertility patterns continue, 60 percent of the Italian people will have no personal experience of a brother, a sister, an aunt, an uncle, or a cousin;[1] Germany will lose the equivalent of the population of the former East Germany; and Spain's population will decline by almost one-quarter. Europe is depopulating itself at a rate unseen since the Black Death of the fourteenth century.[2] And one result of that is a Europe that is increasingly "senescent" (as British historian Niall Ferguson has put it).[3] When an entire continent, healthier, wealthier, and more secure than ever before, fails to create the human future in the most elemental sense-by creating the next generation-something very serious is afoot. I can think of no better description for that "something" than to call it a crisis of civilizational morale. Understanding its origins is important in itself, and important for Americans because some of the acids that have eaten away at European culture over the past two centuries are at work in the United States, and indeed throughout the democratic world.

link I thought it was an interesting snippet, any other impressions?

[johnny]

Looks like there's a job for me, i'll get right down to it.

[Timber Loftis]

And this asshat probably says global warming is SPECULATIVE.

Look, I bet Europe isn't depopulating itself the way it was, say, 62 years ago today. Trends change over time.

[Grojlach]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: And this asshat probably says global warming is SPECULATIVE. Look, I bet Europe isn't depopulating itself the way it was, say, 62 years ago today. Trends change over time.

Hey, you know it's a balanced site with fair reporting and no agenda whatsoever when they've got a special David Horowitz section, right?

...

No, I didn't fall for that one either.

[ 06-07-2005, 04:00 PM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

[Morgeruat]

most of the article was irrelevant for the discussion I was trying to get started, so I left it out of what I posted.

[Grojlach]

Originally posted by Morgeruat: most of the article was irrelevant for the discussion I was trying to get started, so I left it out of what I posted.

We already know Europe is growing old rapidly, it's been all over the news for the past 10 years or so. [img]smile.gif[/img] The statistics noted in the article however - which seem to be the only added value - are rather suspect though, for the very reason Timber already mentioned. If you take a small enough sample, you can probably claim just about anything about the European populace in 50 years from now.

[Morgeruat]

Yes, Europe is growing old, but as the article suggests, the question is, is it really achieving negative population growth among europeans (as opposed to migrant communities)?

[Morgeruat]

Much like Michael Moore's films are fatally flawed by imperfect data and spin, he does raise questions that are worth talking about (I believe Cerek said something similar when all the discussion was about Farenheit 911), I felt this was a similar situation, the data may be off, the rest of the article garbage, but it raises an interesting question.

[Orbost]

I would question the author's description of the trend as 'civilizational morale'. That terminology suggests that the falling birth rates are due to Europeans feeling miserable, or unhappy or pesimistic about the future.

I would suggest that actually morale in Europe is very high, and that people are generally positive about their lifestyles and future. The falling birth rate is more about individuals choosing lifestyle over big families - a trend that as far as I am aware is occurring throughout the developed world.

[Lucern]

It does raise the question of why human populations with access to the abundant resources of the wealthiest nations do not grow. The same can be asked about the US's population. I've read that our population would be declining if not for immigration. US-born women have a below-replacement (not by a great amount) fertility rate, but 40% of population growth in 2001 was the result of human migration (as far as we can tell). If accurate, this invalidates that article's explanation (which Morge specifically left out anyway).

This would make sense given a less arbitrary explanation than the one used in the article: measures of education levels and wealth. Both are inversely proportional to the number of offspring an individual has. The more educated and wealthy a population is, especially its females, the fewer children it will produce.

Next we have to ask if population decline is really a bad thing (aside from the obvious benefits of a slight dent in overall human population). Population dynamics will shift, and different groups will reciprocally impact eachother, but are there really negative consequences of this? If so, what could be done given the voluntary nature of fertility in these countries?

Edit to add this article about in which ways the US is growing and declining, and why: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...12/ai_n9157094

[ 06-08-2005, 07:33 PM: Message edited by: Lucern ]