mr president demographers tell us that in order to sustain itself a population needs a birth rate of two point one live births per woman
in the whole of europe the only country that is reproducing at sustainability level is albania or turkey if you count turkey as a european country and nowhere else
according to one un report europe including european russia is scheduled to lose one hundred million people over the next forty years
germany alone is going to see a shrinkage of its population by twenty million
these are not projections about what might happen if we do not do something as there is nothing we can do about it now since the decline in birth rates has already happened
the only question is how we deal with it
how did we get to this stage
what brought us to this pass
one does not want to oversimplify as there are obviously a lot of things going on to do with changing working patterns the spread of contraception the different role of women in society and longevity
however i wonder whether one part of the problem is the way in which the state has expanded and squeezed out the private sphere has annexed to itself jobs and duties that were traditionally discharged within a family childcare education and social security
the first generation raised with cradle to grave welfare or in other words to be excused the traditional responsibilities of adulthood has also been the first to give up on parenthood
we now face a choice between demographic collapse or importing one hundred million people to sustain our numbers and pay our pensions
this should be the top issue in europe and it is not one we can address by arguing about changes in employment regulation
