According to Austrian demographers, the population of Central and Eastern European countries is declining at rates “unprecedented for peacetime”
As follows from the ÖAW press release, as a result of emigration, the population of Central and Eastern Europe has significantly decreased since 1990, while in Western Europe the opposite trend is observed. As noted by “Russkaya Germaniya”, there the population increased from 1990 to 2017 due to immigration.
“Migration flows have become the driving force behind both the growth and decline of Europe’s population,” summarizes the study’s findings, head of the expert group at the Wittgenstein Centre, Tomas Sobotka. “While birth rates in Eastern Europe are no longer different from what was recently typical for Western European countries, migration divides the European continent into two parts. Their poles are Ireland, where population growth of 36% is mainly driven by increased birth rates among locals, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a population decline of 22% due to emigration.”
Other countries with the largest population growth are Switzerland (+26%), Norway (+24%), Spain (+20%), France (+18%), Sweden (+17%), Austria (+15%), Italy (+7%), and Germany (+4%). But, as evident from the press release, in all these countries population growth is caused precisely by the influx of people from outside.
As noted in his comments by Tomas Sobotka, “the population increase in Austria is almost entirely due to immigration, accounting for 13% of the total 15%. Germany became the only country in Western Europe where natural population decline due to mortality (–5%) was offset by immigration (+9%). And as a result, we observe a 4% population growth in Germany.”
In contrast to Western European countries, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo have seen more than a 20% decline in population since 1990. For example, while in Serbia it was minus 8%, in Croatia minus 13%, in Bosnia and Herzegovina this figure reached minus 22%, and in Latvia and Lithuania a catastrophic minus 27%. As noted in the press release of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, “such rates of population decline are unprecedented for peacetime.”
For illustration: as reported in a recent broadcast of “900 Seconds” on the Latvian TV channel LNT, from 2000 to 2016, 100,000 people with higher education left Latvia. In the working-age group of 16 to 65, every fourth resident with higher education left Latvia, and in the age group of 25 to 34, every third with higher education left. Emigrants from Latvia are mainly representatives of professions in which the state invests: engineers, IT specialists, and medical professionals.
40% of those with higher education who left cited economic reasons for their departure, while others cited dissatisfaction with the processes taking place in Latvia and lack of prospects. According to the Latvian Central Statistical Bureau, as of January 1, 2018, the country had 1.934 million residents (in 1990 it was 2.668 million), which is 15,700 fewer than a year earlier.
In Lithuania, in addition to emigration, population decline is caused by high mortality from alcoholism (per resident over 15 years old, an average of 15.2 liters of alcohol consumed, significantly higher than in other OECD countries, where the average is 9 liters per year) and suicides: according to WHO data for 2017, the country had 32.7 suicides per 100,000 population, while in neighboring Latvia and Estonia it was 21.7 and 18.9 respectively, and in Russia – 20.1. As for Lithuanians’ fondness for intoxicating drinks, as the country’s Health Minister Aurelijus Veryga admitted last year, “every second resident of Lithuania suffers from alcoholism.”