Next year is the last year that Europe’s population is set to grow, as it is expected to start declining in 2026, with just one in 25 people living in the EU by the turn of the century, statisticians say.
Ahead of the New Year, Newsweek has spoken to two experts to break down some of the reasons for the population decline of one of America’s greatest allies, some of its fallout consequences and whether it can be reversed.
Europe is forecast to continue growing, albeit slowly, until 2026, when its population will peak at 453.3 million, according to Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, before it falls down to 419.5 million by 2100.
This, along with the faster-growing populations in other countries, means that the EU will only account for 4.1 percent of the global population by that point, Eurostat said in its baseline projections released in July this year.
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For context, the EU made up 10 percent of the world’s population in 1974 and this dropped down to 5.6 percent by 2023.
There are many reasons contributing to this phenomenon, but it largely boils down to the fact that there are more deaths than births in Europe.
In developed countries, an average of 2.1 live births per woman is considered the threshold needed to replace the population, but European women have an average of 1.52 children. This excludes the impact of migration, which was the driving force behind the 1.7 percent population growth that Europe experienced between 2013 and 2023.
Shrinking Workforce
As Europe’s population gets older, the number of working-age people is declining. This means fewer people contributing to the economy through the private sector, but also through taxes, which are needed to fund the pension and health needs of the growing elderly population.
The shrinking share of the working-age population is called the “demographic burden,” according to Population Europe, a network of the continent’s leading demographic research centers.
This could have a “negative impact on the standard of living, measured as GDP per capita,” the network says, citing a 2014 study published in the Journal of Economic and Human Geography.
“Europe’s aging population poses less economic risk than feared if productivity, driven by education, and labor-force participation are accounted for,” Dr. Theodore D Cosco, a research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Institute of Population Aging told Newsweek.
“Policies that increase workforce engagement, particularly among women and older adults,” he added.
Similarly, demographer Anne Goujon, Ph.D., who heads the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis’ Population and Just Societies Program, told Newsweek that “many parameters could help in mitigating the impact of decline.”
“Increase in labor force participation, particularly of women, increase in levels of education, increase in the age at retirement and training over the life course,” were some of the examples she and researcher Guillaume Marois cited.
Immigration has long been a mitigator of Europe’s declining population, but immigration, in the way it is currently taking place, is not enough to offset the decline of Europe’s population effectively, experts say.
Immigration Under Pressure
“In countries in Eastern Europe where the population is declining the fastest, it is largely due to emigration,” Goujon said, “In the receiving countries, some may still see a small increase (especially those with high levels of immigration, such as UK, France, or Sweden), while others may see a more or less marked decline.”
“Overall, the sustained levels of immigration able to compensate for the decline in population would be too substantial,” she added.
Goujon argued that Germany is a case study for this.
Like Many other European countries, Germany’s fertility rate was below 1.5 live births per woman in 2022, according to Eurostat. But its population has not dipped as much as Lithuania, for example, because the former is receiving more migrants while the latter is suffering emigration.
“The high emigration rates explain why in some of the receiving countries where fertility is also low, the population is not declining as much,” Goujon said.
Photo Illustration by Newsweek/Getty Images
Cosco said that while attracting “well-educated, well-integrated migrants may be able to offset some of these challenges, high immigration without proper integration or education selection may increase dependency.”
“A focus on education, strategic migration, and effective labor policies may be able to provide and sustain economic stability despite demographic shifts,” he said.
Cosco cited a 2020 study called Population Aging, migration, and Productivity in Europe, which concluded: “Either increased immigration or alternatively efforts to increase fertility have been suggested––by different sides of the political spectrum––as possible policies to counteract population aging.
“But, neither of these two strategies pursued within realistic bounds will have as much impact as possible changes in labor-force participation, improving educational attainment and better economic integration of immigrants.”
Can Europe Reverse Demographic Slide?
Cosco said it was “hard to say” whether Europe’s population decline could be reversed, arguing that mitigation strategies should be the focus.
Goujon said she thought a reverse was “unlikely.”
“Support to increase fertility has so far been only effective at the margin (or not effective at all),” she said, “Migration can help momentarily, but in order to compensate for a declining workforce, a country needs to have a constant flow of migrants, as migrants age or return to their host country as they age.”
But she went on to argue that “most of human history has been characterized by periods of population growth and periods of decline.”
“Over the next few decades, governments will have to adjust to a shrinking population, but this will be the case, to different degrees and at different times, in pretty much every country in the world,” she said.
Goujon added: “The growth of recent centuries has been exceptional and is unsustainable because, if it continues, it will lead to unrealistic population levels within a century or two. In the future, we will probably return to a normal regime of alternating slow growth and slow decline.”
Newsweek has contacted the European Union, via email, for comment.