Eurocrat’s Wake-Up Call on Demography

August 12, 2005

Volume 7 / Number 31

Dear Colleague:

A European Union commissioner has begun a major effort to get the European

Union to address the demographic decline of its members. Like all

government programs, the first question to ask is: Will its prescriptions

help or hurt?

Steven W. Mosher

President

PRI Weekly Briefing

12 August 2005

Vol. 7 / No. 31

Eurocrat’s Wake-Up Call on Demography

By Joseph A. D’Agostino

More United Nations and European Union apparatchiks continue to stumble

upon the obvious: Rapidly dropping birthrates combined with greater

longetivity of the aged will soon result in major social and economic

crunches in many societies around the world, particularly in Europe.

There will simply not be enough workers to support all these older people

and, in the case of many EU nations, there won’t even be enough people to

populate the countryside without massive increases in already sky-high

immigration rates. Though these international bureaucrats refrain from

explicitly criticizing population control, contraception, abortion rights,

and most especially feminism-sacrosanct dogmas handed down by the small-g

god of political correctness-they discuss the need for dealing with the

consequences of these continuing trends of the 1960s.

Eurocrat Vladimír Špidla, European Commissioner for Employment, Social

Affairs and Equal Opportunities, is among those who are beginning to talk

of the demographic changes that will affect the EU over the next five to

45 years. He emphasizes that if Europe wants to keep its much-beloved

social model-the one in which citizens receive cradle-to-grave protection

from massive welfare states-and continued prosperity, big changes have to

be made. As the Italian saying goes, “If things are to stay the same,

they must change.” Špidla ‘s bureau within the EU’s bureaucratic empire

is due to issue a white paper on this and other subjects by the end of the

year, after months of debate over how to address demographic and other

problems in labor and social affairs.

Špidla began his July 18 speech to the International Population Conference

in Tours by directly contradicting the first principle of both population

control and radical environmentalism. “Demographic decline is never a

good thing,” he asserted (was anyone from Negative Population Growth in

attendance?). “I believe these words reflect the message of Alfred Sauvy,

the founder of INED, the organisers of this conference, but also the

founder of the pro-natalist, pro-family policy which has enabled France to

avoid the inevitability of demographic decline. Population decline is a

reality in Europe, already affecting more than a fifth of our regions.”

He didn’t mention it, but if the EU continues its expansion eastward, the

addition of more formerly Communist Eastern European countries will drag

Europe’s demographics down even further. In fact, though the EU’s

population continues to expand, that of Europe as a whole (including

Russia, according to the UN Population Division’s definition of Europe) is

already shrinking.

Špidla relies on projections that we at PRI think are overly

optimistic-and how can France, with a fertility rate of only 1.8 despite

high immigration, avoid demographic decline when replacement rate is

2.1?-but he points to the same ominous trends. Even assuming large-scale

immigration continues, the numbers look bad. “By the year 2050, the

European Union could have lost almost 7 million inhabitants and 55 million

persons of working age,” Špidla said. “Of the most densely-populated

countries, Poland, Germany and Italy look set to lose almost 10% of their

populations, Spain could remain stable, thanks to substantial immigration,

and only the United Kingdom and France look likely to see population

growth.”

But we don’t have to wait until 2050 for big declines. One generation, 25

years, will do. Even in countries will overall population growth, rapid

aging will transform large proportions of their populations from overall

producers of wealth into overall consumers of it. “By 2030, the

working-age population will most likely have fallen by 21 million,” noted

Špidla . “We will have lost 20 million young people, while the number of

over-65s will have risen by more than 39 million, and the number of

over-80s will have almost doubled.”

Špidla referenced a report issued last year by former Dutch prime minister

Wim Kok, who said that Europe’s already anemic annual growth potential of

2% could drop by one-quarter, to 1.5%, by 2015 because of demographic

decline.

Špidla explicitly calls for ways to “encourage the birthrate,” and

emphasizes that a comprehensive approach, not just the cash baby bonuses

offered with little effect by some countries, must be employed.

Unfortunately, Špidla argues that the same policies that have led to the

problem in the first place-day care, married women in the workplace and

out of the home, more social engineering pushes for “gender equality”-be

expanded in order to solve it. Only the true believers of the left would

argue that the very same things that have helped kill fertility and

destroy families can be ratcheted up to reverse these trends. “Europe

will have to ‘move into top gear’ by encouraging women and men to work and

consolidating the position of children in society,” he said. “We must

respond to the demographic challenge by giving a new dimension to the

policy of equality between women and men and by doing more to encourage

the sharing of family and domestic responsibilities.”

At a speech in Brussels to a conference on demographic change, July 11,

Špidla said, “Europe is the first region in the world to experience three

changes at the same time: persistence of a low fertility rate, an increase

in life expectancy allowing a large number of Europeans to reach an

advanced age, and finally the growing old of ‘baby boomers,’ who are now

becoming ‘older workers’ or pensioners.”

Špidla ‘s EU department issued a green paper on March 15 that laid out the

general parameters of the demographic debate. “To preserve our prosperity

and solidarity we need to step up our efforts to adapt to the economic and

social changes which come from globalisation and the ageing of our

populations. . .,” says the green paper. “Today, there are four people of

working age for every person over 65. But in 2050, this ratio will have

dropped to two to one. Demographic ageing could result in fewer people

entering the labour market and more older people relying on social

protection systems such as pensions and healthcare. If policies are not

changed, potential economic growth could halve over the coming decades to

reach just over 1% per year.”

Špidla points out that Europe, with its high unemployment rates for young

people and low labor force participation rates for older people, still has

a lot of ways to increase the numbers of those working. And he wants to

increase the proportion of women working, too, which will further depress

birthrates. European women’s labor force participation rate has been

going up, contributing to the very problem he is highlighting. “The EU is

well on track to achieve its target for women’s participation in the

labour market,” says the green paper. “The female employment rate rose by

3.2 percentage points between 1999 and 2003, to 56.1 % in EU15, close to

the so-called ‘Lisbon’ target of 57% by 2005.”

The green paper fails to mention the need to enable women to stay home if

they would like to, and how many of those who work do so because of

economic pressures. Špidla didn’t mention that need in his two big July

speeches, either.

Yet Špidla and the EU Commission’s employment department at least

recognize the problem. When his white paper comes out later this year,

the battle will begin to implement EU-wide policies to deal with

demographic decline. Eurocrat meddling has already done great damage to

European families and fertility rates in the past, not to mention other

areas of Europeans’ lives. We’ll see what it does for the demographic

future.

Joseph A. D’Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the

Population Research Institute.

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