Europe is experiencing an unprecedented demographic crisis.
The number of newborns dropped to 366,50,000 in 2023, a record low in more than 60 years, even lower than in Japan.
What is even more terrifying is that 40% of young people have made it clear that they will not have children, and the pension gap is about to exceed 100 billion euros.
From Berlin to Rome, from Madrid to Paris, young people can’t afford houses, can’t afford children, can’t find a stable job.
Will Europe become the next Japan?
Europe is heading the old way of Japan
Europe's demographic crisis is no longer an early warning, but an ongoing reality.
In 2023, the number of newborns in the EU fell to 3.665 million, the lowest since 1961.
More worryingly, the average fertility rate in the EU has dropped to 1.46 and is even lower than the “1.57 shock” that shook Japan that year.
In Spain, the fertility rate was 1.19 and in Italy 1.24, even lower than in Japan today.
This decline in speed is unlikely.
Because a decade ago, they were still discussing how to deal with the “moderate” ageing of the population, but now they are facing a cliff-down.
Germany, as Europe’s economic engine, fell to 700,000 newborns last year to a post-World War II low.
Even in the Nordic countries with traditionally high fertility rates, Finland's fertility rate dropped from 1.87 in 2010 to 1.32.
Although the situation in Sweden is slightly better, it continues to decline.
This is not only a numerical similarity, but even the entire society seems to be slowly moving closer to Japan in the 1980s.
Today’s young Europeans are also facing the triple pressure of high housing prices, high customs and unstable employment.
House prices in Berlin have risen by 70% in 10 years, and Lisbon has risen by 120%.
Young people are forced to live in increasingly distant suburbs, commuting two to three hours a day.
In Milan, sharing has become the norm, and sharing a kitchen and bathroom with strangers at the age of 30 is no longer new.
When rent accounts for 40% of the income, when finding a stable job is “more difficult than the average lottery”, young people naturally choose to delay or even give up childbirth.
Not only that, the marriage rate in Europe has also dropped by 40% since 1990, and the average childbearing age for women has been postponed to 30 years.
40% of young people hesitate to have children because of concerns about climate change, and feel that marriage is "unnecessary" or even "risky".
This shift in values is similar to the “low desire” of Japanese society.
Collapse of ageing.
The chain reaction triggered by the demographic crisis quickly manifested itself in every corner of Europe.
The pension system has suffered the most direct impact, with pension expenditures in Germany and France accounting for more than 20% of the government budget.
On average, each EU citizen pays about 5000 euros per year for other people's pensions.
France’s pension gap is even more exaggerated: it is expected to reach €70 billion by 2030 and may break hundreds of billions by 2050.
When Macron tried to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, he did not expect to trigger a nationwide strike.
The strike caused chaos across France, with subways shut down, garbage storage, and oil refineries closed.
But the attitude of the people is firm: “We know the pension system is in trouble, but why do we pay the ordinary people?”
The problem is that the cost of not reforming is even higher.
Italy's pension expenditure already accounts for 16% of GDP, the highest in the EU.
Spainins the existing system, but if no fundamental reforms are carried out, the pension fund will be completely exhausted by 2040.
By 2050, the dependency ratio in Europe may drop to 1.5: 1, meaning that every 1.5 working people will have to support one retired person.
This pressure is not only economic, but also a fundamental crisis in social operation.
And the pressure on the medical system is equally enormous.
By 2030, the Netherlands is expected to lack 120,000 healthcare workers.
In some parts of Denmark, general practitioners are on average over the age of 60, and younger doctors prefer to stay in big cities like Copenhagen.
As a result, some hospitals in northern Sweden had to offer high subsidies and housing to attract doctors, but the effect remains limited.
Europe cannot escape Japan's fate
Faced with such an urgent demographic crisis, European countries have also tried to make other efforts.
Germany provides 14 months of paid parental leave and a monthly child subsidy of 219 euros, Poland launches the "500 +" plan, and Hungary even exempts mothers of four children from tax for life.
However, the effect was minimal. Hungary's fertility rate only rose slightly from 1.4 to 1.5, and Poland's fertility rate even continued to decline.
Because these policies are incurable, the underlying reasons young people do not have children have not been addressed.
Some say they don’t accept more immigrants.
Indeed, the EU received 2.5 million net immigrants in 2022, filling some job vacancies in the short term.
But to maintain population stability, the EU needs 5 million net migrants every year.
But from Italy to Sweden, far-right parties have risen through anti-immigration sentiment, and immigration policies are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
Meloni in Italy, Le Pen in France, and the Choice Party in Germany, these far-right forces all regard anti-immigration as their core issue.
In the recent European Parliament elections, far-right parties have made breakthroughs in several countries.
The new Dutch government has promised the "strictest immigration policy in history", and Denmark even proposed to set refugee camps in Africa.
In this political climate, it is almost impossible to expect mass migration to solve the population problem.
The most worrying thing is that Europe may fall into a Japanese-style vicious cycle, forming an endless cycle of "the poorer the more you are, the less you are, the poorer you are."
The European Central Bank has warned that population decline could put potential growth below 1% by mid-century.
When the population drops from 450 million to 300 million or even 150 million, it is not only the decrease of the number, but the exhaustion of the running power of the whole society.
The Japanese car is in front of you:
In the early 1990s, the Japanese real estate bubble broke, and the economy fell into a long stagnation.
Facing the uncertain future, young people choose not to get married and have children.
Now 30 years have passed, Japan’s fertility rate has fallen from 1.5 to 1.2 and economic growth is almost stagnant, and social vitality is seriously insufficient.
Today, large parts of Japan's rural land are desolate, the number of elderly people in cities is higher than the number of young people, and the whole country is slowly aging.
Although Europe does have some advantages: a more open immigration policy, population mobility within the EU, and relatively diverse cultures.
But these advantages are not worth mentioning in the face of the tide of population crisis.
The population is not the whole of the country, but if the future population is lost, even the "future of the country" becomes blurred.
Now Europe is at a crossroads, but there is not much time left for it.
In fact, the most disturbing thing is that everyone knows the seriousness of the problem, but it is difficult to implement the solution.
Raising the retirement age will trigger strikes, increasing immigration will encourage the far right, and significantly increasing maternity allowances will increase the financial burden.
Every choice is full of political risks, so the problem drags on year after year until it becomes too serious to recover.
The demographic crisis in Europe has sounded the alarm of the world:
When young people cannot see hope for the future, no matter how rich a country is, it will slowly lose its vitality.
Can Europe avoid repeating Japan's mistakes? The answer may lie in the choices in the next few years.
conclusion
The population collapse is not just a numbers game; it is about everyone's future. When 40% of young people choose not to have children and the pension system is crumbling, what we see is the common destiny of developed countries around the world. Japan has proved that population aging is terrible, and Europe seems to be slowly following Japan's path.
References:
First fiscal year 2024-12-03 — The birth rate in the EU has fallen to a new low: which member states have the most significant decline?
2. World Wide Web-2024 - 12 -04-"Falling to a Historical Low"! British media: Official data shows that the number of new births in the 27 EU countries in 2023 will be 3.665 million."
3. Guangming.com-2023 - 03 -20-"France is about to vote on pension reform, trade unions call for a major strike on the last day"