The United Nations Population Fund recently held a forum in Europe to examine an odd topic — the extremely low fertility rates that most European countries are currently experiencing.
Over the last 25 years, European countries have seen an unprecedented, sustained drop in total fertility rates. As United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Executive Secretary Brigita Schmögnerová noted,
Europe is currently in a unique epoch in its population history. Europe is moving into a new demographic regime.
Since this has never happened to a human society that was not facing some sort of crisis, the implications for Europe’s future are still hotly debated. Europe is likely, for example, to soon become the society with the oldest average age ever — how will that affect it? How will Europe handle the decline in younger workers and the attendant increase in older people?
Sources:
UN’s European population forum to examine region’s low fertility. UN Wire, January 12, 2004.
Experts Examine Europe’s Population, Reproductive Health Concerns. Press Release, United Nations, January 12, 2004.
The UN Population Fund Holds Forum on Europe's Low Fertility Rates by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.