EU faces big drop in birth rate

With no immigration, the population of Europe could fall by 88 million in the next 100 years, because women are having fewer children, and starting families later.

Today, Wolfgang Lutz of the Austrian Academy of Science reports in the US journal Science that in 2000 the population tide in EU countries started to ebb. The population would continue to decline even if birth rates went up, because the average age of the population had increased.

If the current birth rate of 1.5 children persisted until 2020, this "negative momentum" would mean 88 million fewer Europeans by 2100.

"Negative momentum has not been experienced on a large scale in world history so far," Dr Lutz said.

The average age of mothers at childbirth has been increasing. Dr Lutz and his co-author, Brian O'Neill of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna, calculated that this would account for 40% of the future population decline.

The researchers assumed death rates would stay the same and that there would be no immigration into Europe.

"In reality, we expect continued immigration into Europe, but here we wanted to identify these two mechanisms which we think [offer] new and important insights into the nature of population dynamics," Dr Lutz said.

Low birth rates and delayed motherhood meant huge future economic problems. If the average age of motherhood continued to rise for a further 20 years, by 2065 the workforce could have to find another 1.5 billion person-years to support the elderly over the rest of the century.