Does it matter if Europe’s population declines faster than in other regions? If it does matter, why does it matter?

Here is a neat summary of a few of the issues. I like this line:

I can’t shake the idea that the demographic projections are a civilization-wide vote of no confidence. It’s one thing to lose your population to war, famine or plague. It’s quite another to do so out of boredom and despair.

I once drafted a speech for Sir Geoffrey Howe on Population issues. In researching it I hit upon the following Thought.

Take an African country where the population is growing quite quickly – lots of youngsters everywhere. The government there is worried and decides to try to stabilise the nation’s demographic trends. It passes a law which says that from that day onwards no couple may have more than two children (those couples already having more than two may keep them).

If that law is 100% respected from Day One, when does the population stop growing?

When I put this simple question to people most stare blankly. Maths! Some say that it stops immediately. Others say more vaguely "maybe in 40 years or so?".

The answer is obvious, once you know it.

Leaving aside immigration/emigration factors, a nation’s population grows because more people are being born than are dying. In a country where the population is growing fast, lots more people are being born than are dying.

So, the stability brought about by the new law starts to take effect when the children born the day after the new law comes into effect die of old age, ie in some seventy years’ time.

Thus population growth builds up Momentum which rumbles through decades or even centuries.

But likewise population decline builds up hard-to-stop momentum. With fewer children around the numbers of people in retirement grows much faster than the number of people working to support them. Hence Europe and Russia and Japan trundle inexorably towards a very difficult future.

Alas for Europe, our leaders see all this but will not open a serious public debate on it for fear of a massive row with the sprawling ‘social’ establishment: how dare these leaders – almost all white men – urge women to have more babies? Omigod, they’ll be trying to stop abortion next!

Of course, those views will slowly but surely become extinct too.