Demographers have long derived the formula necessary for the population not to decline. Strictly speaking, the population begins to grow if the average woman gives birth to 2.15 children in her lifetime. In practice, this means that families should have three children. The calculations here are simple. First, slightly more boys are born than girls. Consequently, with two children, one girl is not produced on average. Second, not all children will survive to the age when they themselves can become parents. Finally, third, some of these children will be infertile.
But the reduction of Europe's population is only half the problem; the other half is that the entire world population is increasing, and quite rapidly. However, this growth occurs where it itself creates problems no less than the depopulation of Europe's population.
With a sharp decrease in the number of inhabitants of economically developed countries, the population in backward and developing countries is growing rapidly. They will provide the main increase by 2050, when, according to demographers' forecasts, the planet's population will almost double. Currently, the average woman in poor countries gives birth to almost twice as many children (2.9 children) as in rich countries (1.6 children).
That demographic processes are "problems," "crises," "tragedies" is said so often that people have stopped thinking about what, exactly, is so terrible about low birth rates in the global West and high birth rates in the global South. Meanwhile, it is obvious that there are two fundamentally different points of view about the nature of the threat emanating from the current situation. Demographers are divided into rationalists and civilizationists.
For the former, the decline in the birth rate in "zones of well-being" is dangerous not in itself, but in combination with an increase in life expectancy. This combination will radically change the ratio between old and young; a decrease in the birth rate and an increase in life expectancy will lead to an increase in the percentage of elderly people, i.e., potential dependents. To the problem of "no one to support the elderly" is added the problem of "not enough workers for the production sector."
In 2050, in economically developed regions, every third resident will be over 60 years old, and in backward regions, only every fifth. But in eleven poorest countries – Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, and Uganda – half the population will be under 23 years old.
Hence the conclusion suggests itself – the surplus of young population in poor countries needs to be turned into labor migrants and directed to where there is a lot of money and old people, but few workers. Guest workers work, pay taxes, and support the native pensioners. In the 1950s-1960s, similar programs were launched in a number of Western European countries, the USA, and even partly in the USSR.
However, reality differs from theory. First, the qualifications of people from third world countries were sufficient for the industrial phase of development, but are completely inadequate for the modern post-industrial economy. Second, naturalized emigrants reproduce in their descendants the same social stratum they occupy. As a result, an extremely unpleasant thing happens: class stratification in Western society is determined not only by economic and educational factors, but also by ethnic origin. The picture in which a colored proletariat serves white "masters of life" is appropriate in a dystopia, but is unlikely to suit politicians.
And yet rationalist demographers believe that all these problems can be solved. However, a different view of the consequences of demographic imbalance is no less common. For many specialists, the number one problem is not at all economic solutions from the area of "where can we get a working-age population." The reduction in the number of European peoples for them means a threat to civilization itself, which cannot be supported by its aged and few carriers. Their place will inevitably be taken by prolific hordes of barbarians who will leave no stone unturned of the two-thousand-year-old culture of the West.
For civilizationist demographers, solving the issue of depopulation of Europe with the help of labor migrants is not only not a way out, but on the contrary, the most terrible scenario. They seek salvation in propaganda, economic, social and political mechanisms capable of forcing Western women to give birth more. From this point of view, the clash of civilizations comes down to a contest: who outbreeds whom.
Zinaida Dzhioeva, Orkhan Dzhemal.
IA Rosbalt