Throughout much of Europe, immigration has been a major issue as elections have taken place recently, with many voters voicing their displeasure over the state of affairs.
There were deep splits noticed at the polls for all 27 of the EU nations earlier in June, on topics such as immigration, net zero and more.
But, stats about another topic is showing that there’s another potential major issue brewing. The birth rate in Europe is dropping a lot, which could provoke “staggering social change,” demographic experts have warned if something doesn’t change soon.
The Pope actually issued a stern warning about the topic earlier in 2024 when he said:
“Without children, a country loses its desire for the future.”
The Pop was speaking after stats were revealed that show births in Italy had dipped to only 379,000 last year, a record low. That really poor year followed 15 consecutive years of a decline in the country’s birth rate.
Thousands of schools in Italy have closed in recent years because there simply aren’t enough children to attend them.
A family-first campaign has been launched in Italy by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has the backing of the Pope on the plan. She is going to try to increase the number of births to 500,000 annually over the next 10 years, as she says it’s essential to prevent their society from collapsing because elderly workers will far outnumber younger ones.
This isn’t a problem that’s relegated to just Italy, either. Another Catholic-majority country, Spain, has experienced an even steeper decrease in the birth rate.
Experts say that a stable national population can only be maintained if every woman has 2.1 babies on average, what is known as the fertility replacement rate. If numbers are lower than that, the number of young people will fall precipitously.
Not only does that cause issues for the long-term future of a population, it can have significant negative effects on the current population. That’s because when there are less young people in society, fewer people enter the workforce, and fewer people pay taxes, which fund programs such as health services and welfare in many countries.
Not one EU country is above that fertility replacement rate threshold. And while that hasn’t resulted in any nation collapsing yet, there could be bad news on the horizon.
A March report published in The Lancet medical journal said that this trend would result in “staggering social change. … Implications of falling fertility rates are immense,” it added, saying that the entire world could end up being reshaped from what we now know.
As the report noted:
“There will be only six countries, Samoa, Somalia, Tonga, Niger, Chad and Tajikistan where the replacement rate will be above 2.1 by the end of the century.”
Women are only have 1.49 babies on average in the UK, according to 2022 data. That’s much lower than the rate from the 1960s that was 2.6.
For the first time in history, half of all women turn 30 years old without having a child. And, what’s worse is that the projected rate for 2100 is only 1.3 babies per woman on average.