It’s weird. You get countries where common sense dictates that having one kid is a struggle, economically speaking, and having two is really pushing it. But that’s the kind of “common sense” that dooms a civilization to destruction. I lived in Japan, and that’s the way it is.
Meanwhile, if a society is jonesing on the “be fruitful and multiply” meme…
Technically, that’s not possible, right? I mean, it can be low enough to lead to negative population growth (ie, anything > 2.1, ignoring immigration), but it can’t be negative. And Spain is hardly the only part of Europe to have below replacement birth rates – it’s standard in much of Europe; in Northern Italy it’s less than 1!!
Anyways, there have been whole books written on this subject – among the more recent being America Alone by Mark Steyn. Interesting stuff.
I think it’s unfair to charactarize europeans as hostile towards having children. As I see it, it is mostly due to the fact that women are now allowed to pursue education and careers - which is a positive step in my opinion.
Most families here in Denmark have two kids on average - don’t see why that is a problem. - For the reasons others have stated: children survive at much better rates these days than they did just two generations ago.
-Tikster
This graph might help 
There’s been so many factors change over a few decades in Ireland, or Italy, or in most other European countries, that any attempt to single out one cause for a declining birth rate is misleading.
Ha ha ha. I only saw that graph for the first time a few days ago, and it’s brilliant. However, completely to deny the influence of the Catholic church on family size in Ireland and Italy seems a little optimistic.
Agreed. But surely economic changes had a far greater effect?
Was just talking last week with an aunt in Ireland about how her four-child family drew fascinated stares and bizarre comments from hotelliers when in rural England in the 80s. ‘And Protestantism doesn’t
stop at the simple condom. I can wear French Ticklers if I want.’
…and who don’t have fertility problems…
Spanish population was noticeably up and younger in the latest census than in the previous one. OK, a lot of those kids have names like Tatiana Nikolaievna and many have only one parent (the mother, whose ticket price may have included among other items the making of that baby). Charging that kind of ticket prices is wrong; having kids and caring for them is right; what will Spain look like in a couple decades we’ll see when we get there.
Lush Puppy, my house is 90m2, 2 bedrooms, the garage includes a second kitchen; 15’ away from the nearest comercial area in bad traffic (that is, if you get stuck behind a farm tractor). I paid for it 1/10 what a friend paid for his 40m2, 1b, no garage, no habitation permit in Madrid (in theory they can’t live there, it’s supposed to be a store). Prices change a lot by area.
One can only hope that assimilation will temper the extremism of those Muslim immigrants whom that shoe fits, and after a generation or two they will be much like immigrant descendants in the U.S.
Because I don’t see any way of winning this contest demographically. One reason most couples in the prosperous countries don’t want a large brood is because their expectations for their children become higher. They want to be able to give their kids opportunities to further their education, and to be able to provide them with attention and with material things that would be unaffordable if they doubled the number of children. Housing becomes an issue because big families need big houses, which means they have to live way out in the burbs, with the adults commuting their lives away. By contrast, in protoindustrial times and before, a kid was likely expected to work almost as soon as they could talk, so the more the better, Things that we consider so vital today, like formal education, were afterthoughts.
The assumption that extremists=immigrants is misguided. Remember that three of the London suicide bombers were born and raised in Yorkshire.
Indeed - assimilation among the European muslim community seems more and more like a fairy tale these days. Extremist European muslims are often as not second or even third generation Europeans.
Hmmm. If only there were countries that had cultures descended from European cultures, that spoke European languages, and which had large populations who’d be happy to immigrate to Europe.
But seriously. If this is a concern of the Europeans, why don’t they encourage/subsidize immigration from the Americas? Or do they? The last time I checked immigration rules for Britain and France from the US (about 10 yrs ago), they were very restrictive.
GDP per capita:
USA - $43,500 (2006 est.)
UK - $31,400 (2006 est.)
Spain - $27,000 (2006 est.)
Germany - $31,400 (2006 est.)
Subsidies would definitely be fighting against the flow - the flow of migrants is heading the other way, for obvious reasons. Paying yanks to come over here would cost a tonne of money, apart from the self-selection issue that quite a few of the prospective migrants would be attracted by the leisure-time advantages of the european lifestyle 
edit:
I wonder about immigraytion from South America-Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay have been sending millions of immigrants abroad for years. Since many of these people immigrate illegally, they don’t show up in the population statistics. I’d be willing to bet there are subtantial numbers of brazilians in the UK-who only want to work and send money home-and wish to return to brazil (as soon as they can save enough money to buy a business at home). These immigrants could be the salvation of europe-they are young, hardworking, and don’t carry the virus of islamic fundamentalism.
I have heard that Spain does have some preferences in their immigratory laws towards immigrants from Latin America, which makes PERFECT sense: same language, same culture, same religion.
I think every western european country should have similar (if not much more encouraging) laws, especially Romance language countries.
I totally agree, the answer to europe’s youth need lies in its former colonies in the americas who share their western values and not in bee’s nest of the middle east/north africa.
Yes, this is quite annoying to me. I can understand how America doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to banning immigration outright. After all, we are a nation of immigrants, yet so many European nations have looked to much poorer nations for work, when a lot of Americans could possibly be enticed by a lot of the benefits of living in Europe. At the very least make it easier for us to go. I couldn’t get a job with a college degree because of the bureaucratic hurdles here. I’d have been all too happy to learn the language and integrate with the culture, yet it was never possible.
Europe has a lot of advantages in quality of life over America that would outweigh per capita income in some people’s minds. I don’t understand why it’s so taboo to say, “We’ll make it easier for people from similar cultures to immigrate.” It seems to me the answer is sitting there staring them in the face. I supopse the only way that Europe will ever open up specifically to Americans is if there’s some sort of huge economic crisis that impoverishes a lot of Americans, we could easily fill in the population gaps then.
But yes, it’s quite annoying as someone who could provide value to the economy.
Gosh, I wonder where we can find such a country?
Exactly. It’s very aggravating for those of us who want out of this suburbanized, SUV/car-bound culture; sure, there are a few places in the U.S. where we can avoid that, but the tide of economics and job locations can easily sweep us in the opposite direction. A recent National Geographic article on Orlando, FL was very depressing in this regard; it was being portrayed as a vanguard of the new American way of life–almost no centralization, little public transit, and no rapid transit at all, and little worthwhile to do other than going to amusement parks, and how much time and money can you spend doing that?
( I had to mention the SUVs, because a current commercial campaign for Boston Market shows a couple in in their hugeass SUV, who suddenly notice that, because a whole extra family (“and Grandma!”) were invited along, their monster truck is now actually transporting – as many people as it was frigging designed to carry–a rare event!.)
Errrr…a lot of immigration to European countries (be it legal settlement, illegal entry, refugees, etc.) is from former colonies. Y’know, like India, Algeria, Pakistan, Nigeria?
Second point, hinted at in the first, is that we don’t get to pick and choose where immigrants arrive from. Having no overland connections to the parts of the world being criticised in some posts here, America has that luxury. The post I quoted is about as realistic proposition as America stopping all immigration from Mexico.
Thirdly, western Europe is undergoing a massive change in the origins of its immigrant workforce, with eastern Europe providing huge numbers of skilled and unskilled workers, legal and illegal, but mostly with strong language skills.
Or you spend years studying the language, culture, and history in college, only to forget most of the language because you never get to use it.
Probably the advantages would outweigh the income differential for more people than you imagine. I’m sure that much of the “extra” average GDP/capita in America goes to paying for our dependence on cars, which itself is the result of decisions made in the mid 20th century; these included millions of personal decisions made by John Q. Public and many major policy decisions made by our leaders.
