[haku]

Originally Posted by freddie

It's obvious population is aging since the age expectancy is rising streadily and compensates for decreasing birth rate. But it's still a mixed blessing at best. Europe is slowly becoming a continent of old people.

The situation is not too bad in France, the birth rate is currently 1.94 per woman and rising, there are good indications it'll go back over 2.0 pretty soon.

Here's a page that shows the population evolution in France for the past 20 years, the table is in French but easily understandable (all numbers are in thousand people), the first column is the total population, after that you have births and deaths, "Solde naturel" is the natural growth (difference between births and deaths excluding immigration), "Solde migratoire" is the number of immigrants who settle in France.
The situation is relatively stable, France gains every year an average of 250,000 people from natural growth, plus 80,000 people from immigration.
That's about 3 more million people every 10 years.

The population is indeed aging because life expectancy is increasing, but the number of young people is also increasing steadily.

As for the evolution in the coming decades…
Here's the conservative projection (based on declining natural growth, stable immigration) :
population would be 70 million by 2050 with 22% under 20, 52% betweeen 20 and 65, and 26% over 65.
And here's what is more or less the government's objective (stable yearly natural growth of 250,000 like for the past 20 years, slightly higher immigration) :
population would be close to 80 million by 2050 with 24% under 20, 50.5% betweeen 20 and 65, and 25.5% over 65.

The reality is likely to fall somewhere in between, with a population of about 75 million. And in any case, about a quarter of the population should be under 20, another quarter above 65, and the rest in between, which all in all is not that bad and manageable.


It's true that the situation is much worse in Europe as a whole though, those numbers are rather telling:
In 2004, the 25 EU states combined had a natural growth of 180,000 people, France alone had a natural growth of 279,000 people, which means many other EU states actually had a decrease!
2005 was a bit better, the 25 EU states combined had a natural growth of 439,000 people, but France alone had its usual natural growth of 270,000 people, which means the other 24 EU states combined only grew of 169,000!

Like i've said above, France has had an average yearly natural growth of about 250,000 people for the past 20 years, but many other European countries are indeed experiencing a sharp decline. Under the same projections which expect France to reach 75 million people by 2050, Germany is expected to drop to 70 million, and Italy to 45 million.