About 2,100 babies are born every day in Germany, and more than 2,500 people die. Immigration is the reason Germany’s population has been level for 20 years.
What’s true for Germany is true for Europe as a whole: In 2019, Europe’s population grew by one-tenth of 1%.
Europe’s growth rate has been headed toward zero steadily for a decade, and a new report out of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimates that Europe’s population has peaked. The continent begins its steady depopulation today.
“The era of rapid population growth is coming to an end,” write Fed economists Amy Smaldone and Mark L.J. Wright. They add that later this century, in the lifetime of today’s college students, the world as a whole will begin depopulating, according to U.N. figures.
Driving the depopulation decline is a global collapse in baby-making. Birth rates are well below replacement level in Europe, the U.S., China, Korea, Japan, and many other nations. As a planet, our total fertility rate is at 2.3 babies per woman, which is barely above replacement, and it is dropping steadily.
What are the consequences? For one thing, the economists write, “Declining fertility and increased lifespans have resulted in a rapidly aging population.” In 1973, half of the people in the world were under the age of 21, yet “by the end of the 21st century, more than half will be middle-aged or elderly.”
The working-age share of the population is shrinking already, and in Europe and the U.S., it’s even worse: the raw number of working-age people has peaked. Each year, for the foreseeable future, the labor pool will shrink, just as each year for a few decades the elderly population will grow.
New York Times economist Paul Krugman has said there is no reason to worry about this.
The Fed economists disagree.
Yes the U.S. and Europe can, for a brief time, replace the babies we don't have with immigrants, but that becomes harder every year as population growth shrinks in developing countries, too. Mexico already has a birth rate well below the replacement level, for instance.
And historically, cultures with low birthrates become less welcoming to immigrants, making the immigration-for-breeding trade dicier. The bottom line is that most countries in the world will be depopulating soon, and this isn't just some worry by white nationalists, as Krugman and friends disingenuously charge.
“It is likely that pension and health care benefits will come under pressure with a shrinking tax base to pay for them,” the Fed economists write. “Support for raising the retirement age will probably grow. Increasing numbers of younger people will need to care for the elderly unless these services can be automated, while automation may result in significant declines in service quality. And with fewer young people to innovate and become entrepreneurs, the pace of technological change may slow.”
That's not a bright future.
Washington Examiner
