14.1 The EU's demographic future

Between now and 2050, while the USA gains 46 million in working-age population, the EU27 will lose 64 million.

The EU's demographics

"The European project, with a black hole forming at its epicentre, will disintegrate"

Allemagne, Chronique d'une mort annoncée, by Yves-Marie Laulan, Paris, 2004, published by François-Xavier de Guibert, ISBN 2 86839 959 2

The latest population projections of the United Nations Population Division show that, between 2005 and 2050, EU27 will lose 19 per cent, or 64 million, of its current working-age population. Over the same period, the USA gains 46 million of its working-age population.

For EU27, such a drop in its working-age population is more than the entire present-day working-age population, 55 million, of EU27's most populous country and biggest economy, Germany.  The working-age population of Germany itself is projected to drop to 45 million by 2050.  (Only four EU25 countries:  Luxembourg, Ireland, the UK and Sweden will see increases in working-age population during this period;  Bulgaria and Romania, which joined the EU on 1st January 2007, will experience steep declines.)

To appreciate the magnitude of the contrasting changes in the working-age populations of, respectively, the USA and EU27, it might be helpful to imagine some divine hand detaching Germany and all its population from the European continent, towing it across the Atlantic and attaching it to the American mainland.  Europe, roughly-speaking, loses the entire productive power of Germany; the USA gains most of it.

Putting it another way: the "swing" of working-age population from Europe to the USA in the next 43 years is 110 million: EU27 loses 64 million and the USA gains 46 million.

Working-age population (15 to 64 years inclusive in the UN definition) is a proxy for the "productive" part of the whole population: the men and women whose work and incomes provide for children at one end of the spectrum and for old-age pensioners at the other. Changes in working-age populations may be a better predictor (than changes in whole populations) of countries' economic growth, strength and prospects.

The tables below set out the key data.

Table 1: Working-Age (15-64 years) Population in 2005 & 2050:  Regions

Source: UN Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision, Medium Variant www.un.org/esa/population

1. EU15: the fifteen EU members pre-May 2004
2. EU10: the ten countries which joined the EU in May 2004
3. EU2:   Bulgaria & Romania, which joined the EU in January 2007
4. EU27: the present (2007) 27-member EU
5. NAFTA: USA + Canada + Mexico
6. Anglo-Sphere: USA + Canada + Australia + New Zealand + Ireland + UK

Table 2: Working-Age (15-64) Population in 2005 & 2050: Countries

Source: UN Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision, Medium Variant  www.un.org/esa/population.

See also: The Demographic Future of Europe - from Challenge to Opportunity, European Commission, COM(2006)yyy final http://www.europa.eu.int/; Eurostat News Release 48/2005, 8.4.05,  http://www.europa.eu.int/ ; Global Britain Briefing Notes No 26, Old Europe, Young America, 25.4.03 & No 18, Demographic Change 2000-2050, 15.2.02 http://www.globalbritain.org/.

IM, January 2007.