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The aging of Europe, also known as the greying of Europe, is a social phenomenon in Europe characterized by a decrease in fertility, an increase in mortality, and a higher life expectancy. The population of Europe as a percentage of the world population is rapidly decreasing and is expected to decline over the next forty years. The "greying" of Europe specifically refers to the increase in the percentage of Europe's elderly population relative to its workforce.

Overall trends

Giuseppe Carone and Declan Costello of the International Monetary Fund projected in September 2006 that the ratio of retirees to workers in Europe will double to 54% by 2050 from four workers to two workers for every retiree. William H. Frey, an analyst for the Brookings Institution think tank, predicts the median age in Europe will increase from 37.7 years old in 2003 to 52.3 years old by 2050 while the median age of Americans will rise to only 35.4 years old. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates only 39% of Europeans between the ages of 55 to 65 work. If Frey's prediction for Europe's declining median age is correct, productivity in Europe will radically decrease over the next four decades. Austria's Social Affairs Minister painted a bleaker picture in 2006, saying the 55 to 64 year old age bracket in the European Union will be larger than the 15 to 24 year old bracket by 2010. The Economic Policy Committee and the European Commission issued a report in 2006 estimating the working age population in the EU will decrease by 48 million, 16%, between 2010 and 2050, while the elderly population will increase by 58 million, 77%. By 2050 the ratio of Europe's working age to senior age population will decrease by 50%, two workers instead of four for every retiree. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the European Union will experience a 14% decrease in its workforce and a 7% decrease in its consumer populations by 2030.

Pope Benedict XVI warned the continent will die if European society accepts abortion and rejects Christianity, trends he asserted to personal selfishness and inactivity. He lamented the "child-poor" situation and defended priests' celibacy in a speech he gave in Mariazell, Austria on September 7, 2007.

France

France overtook Ireland as the European Union member state with the highest birth-rate in 2007. If projected birth rates continue, France will have the largest population in the EU by 2050, with 75 million citizens.

United Kingdom

The United Nations predicts that by the percentage of the population over the age of 60 will rise to 26% by 2020 and 38% by 2050. More than 12 million Britons do not have occupational pensions, although nearly all of the population is supported under the state pension scheme.

Belgium

The International Monetary Fund's (IMF) High Council of Finance's (HCF) Study Committee on Aging (SCA) predicted in 2007 that Belgium's population will increase by 5% by 2050 due to immigration, a higher fertility rate, and longer life expectancy. However, the IMF's study indicates Belgium's elderly population will increase by over 63% to over 25% of the country's overall population. The Belgian government spent 9.1% of its GDP on pensions and 7.1% on health care expenses in 2005. By 2050 total social spending is expected to increase by 5.8%, assuming there is no change in the age of retirement. Most of this higher social spending comes from pension and health care, rising by 3.9% to 13.0% of GDP and 3.7% to 10.8% of GDP respectively. The decline in the workforce will partly compensate by lowering unemployment which will in turn lower the cost of childcare. The IMF also predicts that by 2050 the percentage of Belgian's population over the age of 65 will increase from 16% to 25%.

Italy

Italy will need to raise its retirement age to 77 or admit 2.2 million immigrants annually to maintain its worker to retiree ratio. About 25% of Italian women do not have children while another 25% only have one child. The region of Liguria in northwestern Italy now has the highest ratio of elderly to youth in the world. 10% of Liguria's schools closed in the 2000s. The city of Genoa, one of Italy's largest and capital of Liguria, is declining faster than most European cities with a death rate, 13.7 deaths per 1,000 people, almost twice the birth rate, 7.7 births per 1,000 people, as of 2005. The Italian government has tried to limit and reverse the trend by offering financial incentives to couples who have children and increasing immigration. The Prodi government established a Ministry of Family headed by Rosi Bindi to encourage population growth. According to Bindi the government will increase the payment childbearing couples receive to €2,500 and will provide state-funded day care, transportation to school and books. While fertility has remain stagnant, immigration has minimized the drop in the workforce.

Italy, a nation which produced more emigrants than its immigrants for years, is struggling with its new-found status as a nation of immigration. Concern over rising rates of criminal activity and terrorism has fueled support for Lega Nord, a regionalist political party in northern Italy where most of Italy's immigrants reside. Tracy Wilkinson of the Los Angeles Times and others have accused the Northern League of promoting xenophobic policies. Roberto Calderoli, a Senator and member of Lega Nord from Veneto, took his pig to the city of Lido where Muslim Italians planned to build a mosque. By having the pig walk on the site Muslims canceled their plans because they view the area as desecrated. Calderoli has suggested the establishment of a "pig day" in which the practice is repeated throughout the country. Giancarlo Gentilini, another member of Lega Nord and the deputy mayor of Treviso, is credited with closing the only mosque in his city. Gentilini previously served two terms as mayor, prohibiting red lanterns outside restaurants, removing park benches, and clearing away immigrant vendors during his tenure. In Treviso 20% of all newborn babies are the children of immigrants. In Padua at least 10% of the city's population are immigrants. Much of the anti-immigrant sentiment is directed towards Muslims as they are the second largest group of immigrants in Italy after Latin Americans.

No Muslim immigrant has carried out a terrorist attack in Italy, but many have been arrested on suspicion of training in terror-networks. Italian police have arrested many immigrants from Morocco and the rest of North Africa. Isabella Bertolini, a Parliamentarian member of the Forza Italia party, echoed the feelings of many Italians when she said the "proliferation of mosques and Koranic schools in Italy must be stopped immediately. Our land is contaminated with thousands of these dangerous, spreading cancers which are centers for recruiting fanatics to be martyred in the holy war which Islam is waging against the West." In 2005 an opinion survey of the populations of Italy's five largest cities found 61% of Italians supported the building of mosques. By 2007 only 28% supported mosque construction. Interior Minister Giuliano Amato tied Italians' public opinion to its population decline, saying the "fear is typical of closed and aging populations for whom diversity in itself is a threat."

More than 30% of Italian males over the age of 30 live in homes owned by their parents, in part because the cost of living in Italy rose after the introduction of the euro. Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, Italy's Economy Minister, proposed granting a tax break worth €1,000 ($1,441) to Italians between the ages of 20 and 40 who rent apartments. He publicized the idea during a Senate hearing on the government's budget for 2008, referring to the young males as "bamboccioni," big babies. Francesco Caruso, a Communist in President Prodi's coalition, Walter Veltroni, the Mayor of Rome and head of the Democratic Party, and Forza Italia lawmaker Isabella Bertolini condemned Minister Padoa-Schioppa's use of the word "bamboccioni" as an offensive caricature of young Italian males. Union leader Guglielmo Epifani and writer Aldo Nove said Padoa-Schioppa's tax break does not go far enough. Nove, author of My Name is Roberta, I'm 40 years old and earn 250 euros a month, said that in 1978 a tenant spent about 25% of his salary on housing. Now renting an apartment exceeds the salary of a young worker. "What else is there to say?" Comedian and activist Beppe Grillo published on his blog a letter from one of these young men living with their parents, where he detailed how it is economically impossible for him to move to any available apartment, because of low wages and high rents.

Eastern Europe

The World Bank issued a report on June 20, 2007, "From Red To Grey: 'The Third Transition' of Aging Populations In Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union," predicting that between 2007 and 2027 the populations of Georgia and Ukraine will decrease by 17% and 24% respectively. The World Bank estimates the population of 65 or older citizens in Poland and Slovenia will increase from 13% to 21% and 16% to 24% respectively between 2005 and 2025.

Portugal

Portugal's population census of 1994 found that 13.1% of the population above the age of 65. Life expectancy for Portuguese increased by eight years between the 1980s and the 2000s. In the 1960s life expectancy for men ranked comparatively low in relation to other Western European nations with 61.2 years for men and 77.5 years for women. In 1999 demographers predicted the percentage of elderly Portuguese would increase to 16.2% and 17.6% in 2010.

Russia

The population of Russia decreased from 149 million people in 1990 to 143 million people in 2005, a 4% decline. The World Bank predicts the population will decrease to 111 million by 2050, 32 million people less, a 22% decline. The United Nations similarly expects a 30% decline by 2050. Other demographers have issued starker predictions, estimating less than 100 million Russian citizens by 2050. Population decline in Russia is compounded by large-scale emigration that began following the fall of the Soviet Union and a poor health care system. Lev Gudkov, a demographer with the Russian Center for Public Opinion Research, estimated in 2002 that over the next fifty years Russia's population may decrease by 72 million people, a 50% decline, with one retiree for every worker, describing parts of Siberia and the Far East as depopulated "deserts". Many blame the presence of women in the workplace, arguing working women lower Russia's fertility rate.

Russia is unique from other European nations as its birth rate is falling while its mortality rate is rising, almost entirely because of deaths related to cardiovascular disease; heart attacks and strokes. While CVD-related deaths decreased in Japan, North America, and Western Europe between 1965 and 2001, in Russia CVD deaths increased by 25% for women and 65% for men. For every 100 births in Italy in 2004 there were 103 deaths. In Russia for every 100 births there were 170 deaths. The percentage of infertile, married couples rose to 13% in the 2000s, partially due to poorly performed abortions. According to expert Murray Feshbach 10-20% of women who have abortions in Russia are made infertile.

Provincial governments have begun offering special incentives to couples who procreate. In 2005 Sergei Morozov, the Governor of Ulyanovsk, made September 12 a provincial holiday, the "Day of Conception," on which couples are given half of the work day off to copulate. Mothers who give birth on June 12, Russia's national day, are rewarded with money and expensive consumer items. In the first round of the competition 311 women participated and 46 babies were born on the following September 12. Over 500 women participated in the second round in 2006 and 78 gave birth. The province's birth rate rose 4.5% between 2006 and 2007.

The World Health Organization suggested in 2005 that Russia could lessen its decline by requiring citizens to wear seatbelts, establishing price controls to artificially raise the price of alcoholic beverages, and increasing immigration. Popular opposition to such measures has prevented their implementation.

Russian nationalists strongly oppose increasing immigration levels with many fearing a loss of identity and espousing an ideology of ethnic nationalism and xenophobia. Yevgeny Krasinyev, head of migration studies at the state-run Institute of Social and Economic Population Studies in Moscow, said Russia should only accept immigrants from the Commonwealth of Independent States, a view echoed by Alexander Belyakov, the head of the Duma's Resources Committee. Thousands of migrant workers from Ukraine, Moldova, and the rest of the CIS have already entered Russia, working illegally and avoiding taxes. Workers from the Central Asian nations of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are also migrating north to Russia and Kazakhstan. Unfortunately, according to Yelena Ryabinina, the Central Asia political refugee program director for the Civic Assistance Committee in Moscow, Central Asian migrants are more likely targets for discrimination and attacks than their counterparts from Ukraine and Belarus because they "do not look Slavic". These workers play a vital role in their home country's economy. Neither their families nor their countries could survive without their remittances. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) released a report on October 18, 2007, estimating remittances sent to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan made up 36.7% and 31.4% of those nations' GDP in 2006. Many employers will take legal migrants' residency documents and enslave them, beating those who try to flee. There were 120 race-related attacks and 31 murders in Russia between January and May 2007. Human rights organizations in St. Petersburg dubbed their city the "foreigners' cemetery" after a high number of murders of Central Asian and African migrants in the 2000s.

Spain

In 1970, Spain's TFR, 2.9 children per woman, ranked second in Western Europe after Ireland's 3.9 children per woman. By 1993 Spanish fertility declined to 1.26 children per woman, the second lowest after Italy. In 1999, Rocío Fernández-Ballesteros, Juan Díez-Nicolás, and Antonio Ruiz-Torres of Autónoma University in Madrid published a study on Spain's demography, predicting life expectancy of 77.7 for males and 83.8 for females by 2020. Arup Banerji and economist Mukesh Chawla of the World Bank predicted in July 2007 that half of Spain's population will be older than 55 by 2050, giving Spain the highest median age of any nation in the world.

See also

• African Century
• Anti-immigrant sentiment
• Children of Men
• Demographic-economic paradox
• Eurabia
• List of countries and territories by fertility rate
• Old Europe
• Sub-replacement fertility
• World population
• Overpopulation

Further reading

• Scholefield, Anthony. The Death of Europe: How Demographic Decline Will Destroy the European Union. 2000.

References

1. ^ Giuseppe Carone and Declan Costello (2006). "Can Europe Afford to Grow Old?" (HTML). International Monetary Fund Finance and Development magazine. {{cite web}}: Text "accessdate-2007-12-15" ignored (help)
2. Richard Bernstein (2003). "Aging Europe Finds Its Pension Is Running Out" (HTML). The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-12-15.
3. "Europe's Aging Population Faces Social Problems Similar to Japan's" (HTML). Goldsea Asian American Daily. Retrieved 2007-12-15.
4. Paul S. Hewitt (2002). "Depopulation and Ageing in Europe and Japan: The Hazardous Transition to a Labor Shortage Economy" (HTML). International Politics and Society. Retrieved 2007-12-15.
5. Ian Fisher (2007). "Pope Vigorously Defends Catholicism in Austria and Raises Concerns on Europe's Future" (HTML). The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-12-15.
6. "Pope slams 'child-poor' Europe" (HTML). ABC News. 2007. Retrieved 2007-12-15.
7. Caroline Wyatt (2007). "France claims EU fertility crown" (HTML). BBC News. Retrieved 2007-12-15.
8. "France has a baby boom" (HTML). International Herald Tribune. 2005. Retrieved 2007-12-15.
9. Sarah Toyne (2002). "Ageing: Europe's growing problem" (HTML). BBC News. Retrieved 2007-12-15.
10. Rodolfo Luzio and Jianping Zhou (2007). "March 2007, IMF Country Report No. 07/88, Belgium: Selected Issues" (HTML). International Monetary Fund. Retrieved 2007-12-15.
11. Rudolf Luzio (2007). "Belgium: Time to Shift to Higher Gear" (HTML). International Monetary Fund. Retrieved 2007-12-15.
12. Unknown (2000). "Aging Populations in Europe, Japan, Korea, Require Action" (HTML). India Times. Retrieved 2007-12-15.
13. "Empty playgrounds in an aging Italy" (HTML). International Herald Tribune. 2006. Retrieved 2007-12-15.
14. ^ "In Italy, backlash against migrants grows" (HTML). Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2007-12-22.
15. "Italians pick leader of new party" (HMTL). TVNZ. 2007. Retrieved 2007-12-22.
16. Deepa Babington (2007). "Uproar over tax break for Italy's 'big babies'" (HTML). SignonSanDiego. Retrieved 2007-12-22.
17. The Great Big Boy, from Template:En icon
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19. ^ "The Demographic Transition in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union" (HTML). World Bank. Retrieved 2007-12-22.
20. Schroots, J. J. F. (1999). Aging in Europe. pp. 101–102. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
21. ^ Steven Eke (2007). "Russia's population falling fast" (HTML). BBC News. Retrieved 2007-12-22.
22. ^ Masha Stromova (2007). "Have Sex, Make A Baby, Win A Car?" (HTML). CBS News. Retrieved 2007-12-22.
23. ^ Fred Weir (2002). "Russia's population decline spells trouble" (HTML). The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 2007-12-22.
24. Nicholas Eberstadt (2004). "The Emptying of Russia" (HTML). The Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-12-22.
25. Gulnoza Saidazimova (2007). "Central Asia: Labor Migrants Face Abuse, Xenophobia" (HTML). RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. Retrieved 2007-12-22.
26. Schroots, J. J. F. (1999). Aging in Europe. pp. 107–108. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
27. "Study finds that Eastern Europe, former Soviet republics aging fastest of world countries" (HTML). International Herald Tribune. 2007. Retrieved 2007-12-26.

External links

• FLASH POINTS AND TIPPING POINTS: Security Implications of Global Population Changes, 2005-2025
• CoViVE Research Consortium on Population Ageing in Flanders and Europe
• The Emptying of Russia
• Replacement Migration: Is it a solution for Russia?

• Aging
• Demography
• History of Europe
• Population