Why will low birthrate in Europe trigger ‘Staggering social change’?
The Black Death – the pandemic of bubonic plague which swept Europe and Asia for about five years in the mid-1300s – is widely believed to have reduced the global population by one-third.
But almost 700 years after this infamous pandemic became the last worldwide phenomenon to reduce global population levels by such a huge amount, a new report has warned of the “staggering social change” posed by plummeting fertility rates which could also see the number of humans on our planet, currently standing at more than eight billion, fall within decades.
According to a recent global fertility study published in the international medical journal, The Lancet, “Fertility is declining globally, with rates in more than half of all countries and territories in 2021 below replacement level”.
Natalia V Bhattacharjee, one of the report’s co-lead authors, said the “implications are immense” – particularly for countries in Western Europe, which are currently seeing massive unrest over migration levels.
“These future trends in fertility rates and live births will completely reconfigure the global economy and the international balance of power and will necessitate reorganising societies,” she stated.
The study suggested that Western Europe, where the far-right has long made the issue of falling fertility a cause celebre, faces a particularly steep fall in births in the coming decades and may have to reopen itself to unfettered migration to address the problem.
What does the Lancet report say?
The March report, titled, Global fertility in 204 countries and territories, 1950-2021, with forecasts to 2100, (PDF), was compiled by a team of international researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
It based its predictions on the widely accepted premise that countries require a total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 children per woman in order to ensure a broadly stable population.
However, in Western Europe, TFR is forecast to drop from 1.53, where it was in 2021, to 1.44 in 2050, and drop again to 1.37 in 2100, according to the report, which predicts that Spain will suffer one of the steepest declines – to 1.11 in 2100.
The team also predicted that only six countries in the world – Samoa, Somalia, Tonga, Niger, Chad and Tajikistan – would still have a TFR above 2.1 by the turn of the next century.
How will this affect Western countries?
If the findings in The Lancet are correct, then the likes of the United Kingdom, where the birthrate is predicted to fall to 1.38 in 2050 and 1.3 in 2100, from 1.49 in 2021, will become reliant on immigration for the next eight decades or more if it is to sustain its population size, currently just under 68 million.
As fewer babies are born and medical advances mean people are living for longer, Western Europe is facing the prospect of a rapidly ageing population. With fewer young people generating wealth to balance the rising costs of sustaining the elderly, countries could face serious economic challenges in the decades ahead.
The Lancet report, which indicated that sub-Saharan Africa would account for one in every two children born in 2100, therefore also predicts that high-income countries will struggle to maintain economic growth.
The only obvious solution, experts say, is to allow more migration from countries with younger populations.
Will countries in the West have to adopt open-border policies?
Eventually, yes, said Bhattacharjee. “Once nearly every country’s population is shrinking, reliance on open immigration will become necessary to sustain economic growth.”.
