# The European Population Crash **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 2, 2010, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396 "2010-02-02T16:30:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/1 "2010-02-02T16:30:16Z")
> **[The population crash | Fred Pearce](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/01/population-crash-fred-pearce)** > > Across Europe, we are having fewer babies. In many places, such as the deserted town of Hoyerswerda in east Germany, the falling birth rate is already taking its toll > [@](#): > > Hoyerswerda, a town two hours beyond Dresden close to the Polish border, has lost half its population in the last 20 years. It is an ageing ghost town. The young and those with qualifications have left – young women especially. And those that remain have given up having babies. Hoyerswerda (known to its citizens as Hoy Woy) seems a town without a purpose, in a corner of Europe without a future. > > On the windswept roof of the Lausitz Tower, the town’s only landmark, I meet Felix Ringel. A young German anthropologist studying at Cambridge University, he has passed up chances taken by his friends to investigate the rituals of Amazon tribes or Mongolian peasants. As we survey the empty plots of fenced scrub below, he explains that the underbelly of his own country seemed weirder and far less studied than those exotic worlds. > > In its heyday in the 60s, Hoyerswerda was a model community in communist East Germany, a brave new world attracting migrants from all over the country. They dug brown coal from huge open-cast mines on the plain around the town. There was good money and two free bottles of brandy a month. But the fall of the Berlin Wall changed all that. It was here in 1989, in the towns and cities of Saxony, that the people of the east started moving west to capitalism and freedom. At the head of the queue were the young, especially young women. [QUOTE=whack-a-mole] Is that a European population crash or just people abandoning a town? Presumably those people who left are still, by-and-large, in Europe somewhere. [/QUOTE] So is there a population crash actually occurring in Europe? [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gm.html](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gm.html) > [@](#): > > Population: > > 82,329,758 (July 2009 est.) > country comparison to the world: 15 > Age structure: > > 0-14 years: 13.7% (male 5,768,366/female 5,470,516) > 15-64 years: 66.1% (male 27,707,761/female 26,676,759) > 65 years and over: 20.3% (male 7,004,805/female 9,701,551) (2009 est.) > Median age: > > total: 43.8 years > male: 42.6 years > female: 45.2 years (2009 est.) > Population growth rate: > > -0.053% (2009 est.) > country comparison to the world: 210 > Birth rate: > > 8.18 births/1,000 population (2009 est.) > country comparison to the world: 220 > Death rate: > > 10.9 deaths/1,000 population (July 2009 est.) > country comparison to the world: 44 > Net migration rate: > > 2.19 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2009 est.) > country comparison to the world: 39 > Urbanization: > > urban population: 74% of total population (2008) > rate of urbanization: 0.1% annual rate of change (2005-10 est.) > Sex ratio: > > at birth: 1.06 male(s)/female > under 15 years: 1.05 male(s)/female > 15-64 years: 1.04 male(s)/female > 65 years and over: 0.72 male(s)/female > total population: 0.97 male(s)/female (2009 est.) > Infant mortality rate: > > total: 3.99 deaths/1,000 live births > country comparison to the world: 210 > male: 4.41 deaths/1,000 live births > female: 3.55 deaths/1,000 live births (2009 est.) > Life expectancy at birth: > > total population: 79.26 years > country comparison to the world: 32 > male: 76.26 years > female: 82.42 years (2009 est.) > Total fertility rate: > > 1.41 children born/woman (2009 est.) > country comparison to the world: 194 So we see here that Germany has a low birth-rate, that its population is declining at about half a percentage point, after accounting for immigration which is mostly from Eastern European countries, causing a brain drain in Eastern Europe where the birth rates are even lower than they are in the Western countries. The population decline will increase in severity, as one may not that there are about 50% more people over the age of 65 than there are under 14. In a welfare state this creates a problem as the increase in new workers has trouble keeping up with the entitlement benefits of new retirees. So sure, we can point at immigration, but it’s important to know where immigration comes from. That immigration will of course change the nature of European culture. As it comes from the East it will change the culture in more minor ways, as it comes from outside of Europe it will change the cultures more dramatically. Figures for Poland > [@](#): > > Population: > > 38,482,919 (July 2009 est.) > country comparison to the world: 34 > Age structure: > > 0-14 years: 15% (male 2,964,995/female 2,802,278) > 15-64 years: 71.6% (male 13,713,078/female 13,845,251) > 65 years and over: 13.4% (male 1,966,406/female 3,190,911) (2009 est.) > Median age: > > total: 37.9 years > male: 36.1 years > female: 39.7 years (2009 est.) > Population growth rate: > > -0.047% (2009 est.) > country comparison to the world: 208 > Birth rate: > > 10.04 births/1,000 population (2009 est.) > country comparison to the world: 195 > Death rate: > > 10.05 deaths/1,000 population (July 2009 est.) > country comparison to the world: 62 > Net migration rate: > > -0.47 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2009 est.) > country comparison to the world: 106 > Urbanization: > > urban population: 61% of total population (2008) > rate of urbanization: -0.3% annual rate of change (2005-10 est.) > Sex ratio: > > at birth: 1.06 male(s)/female > under 15 years: 1.06 male(s)/female > 15-64 years: 0.99 male(s)/female > 65 years and over: 0.62 male(s)/female > total population: 0.94 male(s)/female (2009 est.) > Infant mortality rate: > > total: 6.8 deaths/1,000 live births > country comparison to the world: 173 > male: 7.52 deaths/1,000 live births > female: 6.03 deaths/1,000 live births (2009 est.) > Life expectancy at birth: > > total population: 75.63 years > country comparison to the world: 75 > male: 71.65 years > female: 79.85 years (2009 est.) > Total fertility rate: > > 1.28 children born/woman (2009 est.) > country comparison to the world: 209 The TFR here is even lower than in Germany, and net migration is to LEAVE Poland. Though, the population of Poland is younger as a whole than Germany. The average age in Poland is 37.9 as opposed to Germany’s 43.8. As far as I am aware, there is no country in Europe that actually has a positive fertility rate. Looking over [this table](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html?countryCode=pl&rankAnchorRow=#pl) I don’t notice anything that pops out at me in the countries that rank higher than New Zealands TFR of 2.1 which is the standard replacement rate. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/2 "2010-02-02T16:39:06Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > So sure, we can point at immigration, but it’s important to know where immigration comes from. That immigration will of course change the nature of European culture. As it comes from the East it will change the culture in more minor ways, as it comes from outside of Europe it will change the cultures more dramatically. Or, they’ll just adapt and fit in as usually happens. And a few decades from now some other bunch of immigrants will the latest Doom of Western Civilization. And, it’s not like Europe was unlikely to change anyway. It’s far different than it was a hundred years ago, and I’m sure it’ll be far different than it is now a hundred years in the future. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/3 "2010-02-02T16:41:32Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Or, they’ll just adapt and fit in as usually happens. And a few decades from now some other bunch of immigrants will the latest Doom of Western Civilization. Depends on how one views Western Civilization I suppose. > [@](#): > > And, it’s not like Europe was unlikely to change anyway. It’s far different than it was a hundred years ago, and I’m sure it’ll be far different than it is now a hundred years in the future. Sure, the only constant is change, but this kind of demographic implosion is unprecedented. Russia has recently implemented some serious fertility policies. Japan is worse off than Europe and China won’t decline, it will implode as a result of the one-child policy. So we talk about immigration into Europe, but there will be other places that compete for the immigrant labor. Also, this is a horror for the third world as the third world provides the labor pool, but the first world nations withdraw its educated populace, and they experience a brain drain the likes of which we’ve never seen in history. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/4 "2010-02-02T16:44:27Z")
1. yes, the population of a number of countries in Europe is projected to decrease slightly over the coming decades 2. this demographic trend is not a crash by any reasonable definition of the word ‘crash’ rather, it looks like the population will stabilize, what with immigrants still coming in. 3. in a number of places in the former Soviet block, there _is_ a large population decrease underway, as has been the case for a while now. This is what Hoyerswerda is an example of. It’s particularly bad in the former GDR, though, but in some rural parts in other Eastern European countries, many people have left for the city or for Western Europe, and what’s left is not much to look at. 4. while these places in Eastern Europe usually _also_ have a low fertility rate (this is especially a problem in Russia), and this will have its impact in a number of decades, the current decrease is a result of migration to other parts of Europe, and not of a decrease in birth rate quite yet. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/5 "2010-02-02T16:51:07Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > 1. yes, the population of a number of countries in Europe is projected to decrease slightly over the coming decades > 2. this demographic trend is not a crash by any reasonable definition of the word ‘crash’ rather, it looks like the population will stabilize, what with immigrants still coming in. > 3. in a number of places in the former Soviet block, there _is_ a large population decrease underway, as has been the case for a while now. This is what Hoyerswerda is an example of. It’s particularly bad in the former GDR, though, but in some rural parts in other Eastern European countries, many people have left for the city or for Western Europe, and what’s left is not much to look at. > 4. while these places in Eastern Europe usually _also_ have a low fertility rate (this is especially a problem in Russia), and this will have its impact in a number of decades, the current decrease is a result of migration to other parts of Europe, and not of a decrease in birth rate quite yet. Net emigration does not impact TFR. If what you were saying was true, and fertile aged people were moving from one part of Europe to another then we’d see a corresponding TFR increase in other nations, but the reality is that TFR is reducing in EVERY European country. Very few first world nations have a neutral or positive TFR, such as the United States and New Zealand. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/6 "2010-02-02T16:56:06Z")
well, yeah, that’s why I said (but I guess it’s only the first of as many as FOUR points, so it’s easily overlooked :D) [QUOTE=me, baby] 1. yes, the population of a number of countries in Europe is projected to decrease slightly over the coming decades [/QUOTE] it’s just not a **crash** , and this whole apocalyptic view that some seem to have that the indigenous European population will die out and will be replaced with immigrants, which will spell the end of European cultures, is completely ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/7 "2010-02-02T16:58:35Z")
There are plenty of Hoyerswerdas across the American midwest. Changing patterns of farm ownership and transport of goods have drastically reduced the economic role that many small towns used to fill. More generally, how much of the US population numbers represent births by the “native” population vs. immigration? Looking at the charts, it’s amusing that the Vatican has a higher birth rate than Germany. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/8 "2010-02-02T16:59:05Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Also, this is a horror for the third world as the third world provides the labor pool, but the first world nations withdraw its educated populace, and they experience a brain drain the likes of which we’ve never seen in history. Then maybe we should strive to bring up the educational level of the third world nations to even it all out. ---
**Author:** ![Palo\_Verde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Palo\_Verde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palo_Verde)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/9 "2010-02-02T17:02:54Z")
I taught high school in Poland from 1990-1992. Recently I was contacted by one of my former students and in asking her about those kids who I taught 20 years ago I was floored by how many of them have left the country. They are now living in Australia, Germany, England, South Africa, Ireland, Canada, etc. Now this was in a very small town in Poland, and these students were college-bound, But out of 15 or so that I asked about, all but 1 had left the county. These were the best and brightest, and now they are professionals in their mid-30s, benefiting countries other than Poland. It does not bode well for Poland. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/10 "2010-02-02T17:10:25Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Then maybe we should strive to bring up the educational level of the third world nations to even it all out. If only someone would have thought of that before now! ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/11 "2010-02-02T20:16:09Z")
One thing I’d like to point out is that rebuttals to this idea generally come along the lines of the straw man of European and Western doom. Can we discuss trends and their implications without resulting to extreme and apocalyptic straw people? ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/12 "2010-02-02T20:22:13Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Can we discuss trends and their implications without resulting to extreme and apocalyptic straw people? The title of this thread is verging on an extreme and apocalyptic straw person, to be fair. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/13 "2010-02-02T20:27:35Z")
> [@Baron\_Greenback](#): > > The title of this thread is verging on an extreme and apocalyptic straw person, to be fair. Actually, it’s the title of the article I posted in the OP. But I don’t think people really understand how this works. Basically at a certain point when too few young people are born then the population crashes because the deaths of the old people start to outnumber the number of births. So as such the reduction in population takes about a generation and then suddenly it reduces dramatically. If there are 50% more people over 65 than under 14, then that means in the next 14 years, when those under 14 reach breeding age, there will be that many fewer people to breed to create the next generation. If TFR problems are not corrected before they become a problem, then it becomes a permanent demographic shift, unless the society returns to a radical TFR. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/14 "2010-02-02T21:08:36Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Actually, it’s the title of the article I posted in the OP. Uh-huh. Doesn’t change in any way the strawpersonship of the title of this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/15 "2010-02-02T21:10:48Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Actually, it’s the title of the article I posted in the OP. Yes, but it’s a stupid and possibly apocalyptic article, because it mixes up two different and largely unrelated trends: 1) that people have been leaving Hoyerswerda and other towns in the former GDR because life sucks there in comparison to life in Western Germany, to the extent that such towns become largely depopulated; 2) that the population of countries in Europe will \*stabilize \* and then decrease over the next decades unless there is enough immigration from elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/16 "2010-02-02T21:26:14Z")
What is it crashing into? ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/17 "2010-02-02T23:12:16Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Sure, the only constant is change, but this kind of demographic implosion is unprecedented. > > Russia has recently implemented some serious fertility policies. Japan is worse off than Europe and China won’t decline, it will implode as a result of the one-child policy. > > So we talk about immigration into Europe, but there will be other places that compete for the immigrant labor. > > Also, this is a horror for the third world as the third world provides the labor pool, but the first world nations withdraw its educated populace, and they experience a brain drain the likes of which we’ve never seen in history. China is supposed to have major problems soon. By the 2040s they will have 400+ million elderly (25% of their population). And unlike western countries they do not have a pension and health care system to take care of them. Even in the US, which generally has the weakest social safety net, we still have medicare and social security for the elderly. The worry is nations like China will become geriatric before they have the wealth to deal with it. > **[China’s time bombs: Gray China](https://theglitteringeye.com/chinas-time-bombs-gray-china/)** > > I’m still working on my observations on the snowballing problems with China’s banking and financial systems so as the second installment in my series on the serious problems that China faces we’ll concentrate on aging. Note: much of the information... A problem is that once any country gets a per capita GDP of $8000 or so per person, TFR drops to replacement levels or lower. It isn’t just western culture, it happens everywhere over the globe. Doesn’t matter the geography, religion, or culture. Virtually every country with GDP over $10,000 is below replacement levels of 2.1. > **[File:TFR vs PPP 2009.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TFR_vs_PPP_2009.svg)** > > CIA - The World Factbook archive copy at the Wayback Machine > Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. > You cannot overwrite this file. The following 2 pages use this file: I think only 1 wealthy nation has a TFR above replacement rates, and that is Israel. And I don’t know how much of that is due to the concept of Israel as a religious state or immigration. The US is roughly at replacement rate at 2.1, but every other wealthy country is below. Japan is at 1.27 and their population is predicted to drop from about 130 million now to 65 million by 2100. On that note, I wonder what the TFR is in western Europe after you subtract the immigrant population. The problem is if you have people in western Europe who are from poor parts of Africa, they may still have large numbers of kids. But as western Africa develops, their TFR will drop to 1-3 also. So the current numbers in Europe may be inflated in a way due to immigration for more poor countries. The real numbers for those who were born and raised in a wealthy country may be even lower than the 1.3-1.9 that is reported after you subtract immigration. That is a guess though. Part of me thinks it may be good though. I was reading an article by Robert Kennedy jr talking about how some people are opposed to alternative energy because it’ll cost some jobs. But he said when slavery was abolished in England, the labor shortage forced the English to improvise and started the industrial revolution. The black plague, after it wiped out half of europe, led to a variety of innovations designed to save labor. So I guess a consequence is that the investment in robotics will pick up dramatically to compensate for the lower pool of labor. I have no idea what that means for the world in 150 years. If we will actually be like the movie Wall-e with a bunch of people being waited on hand and foot by robots. But it sounds somewhat realistic. Japan is already doing this. [http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,299677,00.html](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,299677,00.html) If you have 30% of a nation that is geriatric, and another 50% that is able and willing to work (with another 20% that is children or disabled) then a reasonable portion of that 50% has to service the 30% who are elderly. So you not only spend trillions in capital taking care of the geriatric, but you have many workers devoted to helping them too. The brain drain from the third world is also a problem. I think some people in the developing world were trying to make it a human rights violation to pull health care workers from the developing world to move them to the west. That is pretty shitty when you think about it, pulling nurses and doctors from areas with almost no medical infrastructure and moving them to the US & Europe. However, if anything I thought the brain drain was reversing. It used to be the best and brightest came to the west and stayed here. Now they come, get an education, then go back home to India, China, Africa, etc. Now there is talk that they aren’t even coming here in the first place. The educational infrastructure of places like China is developing to the point where people might just stay home altogether. There are world class universities in China like Tsinghua, Beijing, etc. Considering that about 40% of the developing world lives in India or China, its actually going to get better for them. If anything, the reverse brain drain is hurting the west. We used to be able to count on tons of foreign born scientists, engineers, technology workers, mathematicians, etc to come here, get an education and contribute to the economy by creating patents and starting companies. Now they aren’t even coming at all as much anymore. They are going to or staying in India or China and building their economies. But anyway, I think a big reaction will be heavy investments in labor saving devices. No idea about the standard of living, or the advances of science. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/18 "2010-02-02T23:41:19Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Actually, it’s the title of the article I posted in the OP. > > But I don’t think people really understand how this works. > > Basically at a certain point when too few young people are born then the population crashes because the deaths of the old people start to outnumber the number of births. So as such the reduction in population takes about a generation and then suddenly it reduces dramatically. If there are 50% more people over 65 than under 14, then that means in the next 14 years, when those under 14 reach breeding age, there will be that many fewer people to breed to create the next generation. If TFR problems are not corrected before they become a problem, then it becomes a permanent demographic shift, unless the society returns to a radical TFR. So if 20% are under 14 and 30% are over 65, as the population ages by 25 years those 30% who are elderly all die, but those 20% who were under 14 (who are now 26-39) only create another 12%~ to replace them, leading to a net decrease of 18% of the population in one generation? That is a decline, but its not a huge crash IMO. Not only that, but people 14-40 have kids too. If the TFR is 1.4 that would work out to about a decline of about 34% a generation in population. 100 parents give birth to 66 kids. Those 66 kids give birth to 44 kids, who have 29 kids. By the time those 29 kids are grown (and have 19 kids themselves) all generations before them (except the 44 generation and parts of the 66) will pretty much be dead. Part of me wonders if the current Great Recession is the last major labor surplus the planet will see for a while. If we keep becoming more geriatric, there won’t be enough labor. Yay for me (being labor). I think China has already exhausted their supply of people able and willing to leave the farms to work in the cities. I really don’t know what that means for infrastructure. Less traffic, which is nice. But there will be tons and tons of abandoned building. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2010, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/19 "2010-02-03T00:05:44Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > Yes, but it’s a stupid and possibly apocalyptic article, because it mixes up two different and largely unrelated trends: 1) that people have been leaving Hoyerswerda and other towns in the former GDR because life sucks there in comparison to life in Western Germany, to the extent that such towns become largely depopulated; 2) that the population of countries in Europe will \*stabilize \* and then decrease over the next decades unless there is enough immigration from elsewhere. It seemed pretty obvious to me that it was using the town merely as its lens to talk about a larger trend that involved those cities. You have roundly ignored my counter-argument, which is that the TFR in EVERY European nation is dropping, so the argument that says that they are just moving elsewhere in Europe doesn’t take into account that there is NOWHERE in Europe where TFR isn’t below replacement rate. In the Eastern Bloc Nations it’s VERY low. Germany is kind of in the middle, Spain and Italy are worse than Germany. On the list of the countries with the lowest TFR, the bottom half-dozen are all in Asia, but the next dozen or more are all in Europe. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2010, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396/20 "2010-02-03T00:14:08Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > China is supposed to have major problems soon. By the 2040s they will have 400+ million elderly (25% of their population). And unlike western countries they do not have a pension and health care system to take care of them. Even in the US, which generally has the weakest social safety net, we still have medicare and social security for the elderly. The worry is nations like China will become geriatric before they have the wealth to deal with it. > > [China’s time bombs: Gray China](http://theglitteringeye.com/?p=932) > > A problem is that once any country gets a per capita GDP of $8000 or so per person, TFR drops to replacement levels or lower. It isn’t just western culture, it happens everywhere over the globe. Doesn’t matter the geography, religion, or culture. Virtually every country with GDP over $10,000 is below replacement levels of 2.1. > > [File:TFR vs PPP 2009.svg - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TFR_vs_PPP_2009.svg) > > I think only 1 wealthy nation has a TFR above replacement rates, and that is Israel. And I don’t know how much of that is due to the concept of Israel as a religious state or immigration. The US is roughly at replacement rate at 2.1, but every other wealthy country is below. Japan is at 1.27 and their population is predicted to drop from about 130 million now to 65 million by 2100. > > On that note, I wonder what the TFR is in western Europe after you subtract the immigrant population. The problem is if you have people in western Europe who are from poor parts of Africa, they may still have large numbers of kids. But as western Africa develops, their TFR will drop to 1-3 also. So the current numbers in Europe may be inflated in a way due to immigration for more poor countries. The real numbers for those who were born and raised in a wealthy country may be even lower than the 1.3-1.9 that is reported after you subtract immigration. That is a guess though. > > Part of me thinks it may be good though. I was reading an article by Robert Kennedy jr talking about how some people are opposed to alternative energy because it’ll cost some jobs. But he said when slavery was abolished in England, the labor shortage forced the English to improvise and started the industrial revolution. The black plague, after it wiped out half of europe, led to a variety of innovations designed to save labor. > > So I guess a consequence is that the investment in robotics will pick up dramatically to compensate for the lower pool of labor. I have no idea what that means for the world in 150 years. If we will actually be like the movie Wall-e with a bunch of people being waited on hand and foot by robots. But it sounds somewhat realistic. Japan is already doing this. > > [http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,299677,00.html](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,299677,00.html) > > If you have 30% of a nation that is geriatric, and another 50% that is able and willing to work (with another 20% that is children or disabled) then a reasonable portion of that 50% has to service the 30% who are elderly. So you not only spend trillions in capital taking care of the geriatric, but you have many workers devoted to helping them too. > > The brain drain from the third world is also a problem. I think some people in the developing world were trying to make it a human rights violation to pull health care workers from the developing world to move them to the west. That is pretty shitty when you think about it, pulling nurses and doctors from areas with almost no medical infrastructure and moving them to the US & Europe. > > However, if anything I thought the brain drain was reversing. It used to be the best and brightest came to the west and stayed here. Now they come, get an education, then go back home to India, China, Africa, etc. Now there is talk that they aren’t even coming here in the first place. The educational infrastructure of places like China is developing to the point where people might just stay home altogether. There are world class universities in China like Tsinghua, Beijing, etc. Considering that about 40% of the developing world lives in India or China, its actually going to get better for them. > > If anything, the reverse brain drain is hurting the west. We used to be able to count on tons of foreign born scientists, engineers, technology workers, mathematicians, etc to come here, get an education and contribute to the economy by creating patents and starting companies. Now they aren’t even coming at all as much anymore. They are going to or staying in India or China and building their economies. > > But anyway, I think a big reaction will be heavy investments in labor saving devices. No idea about the standard of living, or the advances of science. Great post except for two things. In the CIA World Factbook there is a data point which is TFR+immigration-deaths. That’s the growth rate, which I mentioned with both Germany and Poland. Germany’s death rate is higher than Poland’s because Germany’s population is older on average, even so, Poland has a net loss on the growth rate. Just FYI. Second, there is no reverse brain drain in the US. The Chinese, Koreans, Japanese and Indians are sending American universities boatloads of kids, and a lot of those kids are starting up businesses and staying in America. We have the laboratory and university infrastructure that is still the finest in the world. The bigger worry to have is whether or not American students can compete for the slots at the top American Univerisities because the schools are not increasing their student body at the same rate as they are increasing the populations they draw from. It doesn’t matter how good the Chinese University Systems are getting, Harvard, Yale, MIT and Berkeley still mean something in Asia, and that isn’t going to change anytime soon. This particular worry I think is off-base. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-european-population-crash/527396.md?page=2)