Hollister Free Lance: The Great, Shrinking Cultures of Europe

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The Great, Shrinking Cultures of Europe

The holiday season is upon us. It is the time of family gatherings that celebrate each other and the meaning of the season. Italian families, like so many of the ethnic families of Europe and the countries with European progeny, will have large Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations. These celebrations will be peopled with grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews, siblings, once-removed, and more. Celebrate now, for large Italian families will soon be a thing of the past. The incessant march of demographics is dooming the future of Europe. Italy's birthrate is down to 1.2 children per woman, a level that is dramatically below the minimum replacement level for a stable population, of 2.1 children per woman. And it has been below replacement level for a quarter of a century. At the present child replacement rate, Italy's population will fall from its present level of 57 million to just 41 million by 2050. Said another way, by 2050, 60 percent of the group in question will have no brothers, sisters, aunts, or uncles, as pointed out by Mark Steyn in America Alone.

The story is the same throughout the countries of Europe. By 2050 at the present rate of births, it will be less than 600 million, a loss of a staggering 125 million Europeans. In 1960, people of European origin, including U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, made up one fourth of the world's population.And the population is obviously aging. The numbers tell their own story. By 2050, only 2 percent of the population of Germany will be younger than 5 but more than 40 percent will be 65 or older. The implications for the social welfare systems of these countries will be catastrophic. In Europe the ratio of working-age people (15-64) to retired people (65 and older) will go from 4:1 in 2000, to 2:1 in 2050. This means there will be only two workers for every one retiree. Since the socialist democracies rely almost entirely on public pension systems, the burden on those remaining in the workforce will be oppressive.Editorial Comment EU-Digest:Absolutely true: that is why we need immigrants in Europe instead of opposing them. The average European of the future will probably have dark hair, be olive skinned and the predominant religion (if any) could be Islam. Again this should not be any problem, but the key must be that immigration is tied to guaranteeing European secularism at all cost and that this principle is anchored in the new European Constitution.