Colin's Journal

The IHT is running the first article I’ve seen from a mainstream news source which doubts the percieved demographic crisis in Europe. It’s not a particularly well argued case, with little in the way of figures to back up the arguments, but it does at least tackle the issue. It also talks about the false linking of demographic with cultural decline, which I’ve written about previously.

While the current birth rate in Europe (and as I’ve pointed out before, almost all OECD countries) will lead to significant population reduction if they are maintained, that’s a fairly large if. Take for example Spain, which according to these figures, had a fertility rate of 1.2 in 1996. Going back just 16 years to 1980 the fertility rate was 2.2, a fairly huge change over the matter of a decade and a half.

Given such historical changes in fertility rates it seems rater premature to make dire predictions regarding the future population of Europe come the end of the century.

(Thanks to Europundit for the IHT link).

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