You’ve probably heard the overpopulation cant — in the presence of abundant resources, populations will increase in size until they overwhelm their environment and then crash, regardless of whether the species is rabbits or deer or human beings. So why is Europe’s population declining?
Europe is certainly one of the richest parts of the world, and yet its population is currently projected to decline for decades even if Europeans should suddenly start having significantly more children. Europe’s population hit the point where it began declining sometime in 2000.
Currently there are only 1.5 children born for each woman of child bearing age — far below the 2.1 replacement level. Why so few children? Largely because women are waiting longer and longer to get married, on average, in Europe.
As of 2000 the European population was about 375 million. If current marriage and birth trends continue, Europe’s population fall below 300 million by the end of the century.
Source:
Europe shrinking as birthrates decline. Mark Henderson, The Times (UK), March 28, 2003.
The European Population Shrinking by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.