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EU Sounds Alarm on 20-Million Worker Shortfall by 2030

Eastern Europe’s birth rates now the lowest at 1.2

By Terry Vanderheyden

PRAGUE, September 6, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The European Union has sounded the alarm on their dangerously low birth rate, which will result in a 20-million worker shortage by as early as 2030. Experts admit that there is no way immigration can satisfy the shortfall, according to a New York Times exposé.

According to the Times, there were no European countries with fertility rates of less than 1.3 children per woman in 1990. By 2002, there were 15, while six more were below 1.4. “No European country is maintaining its population through births, and only France — with a rate of 1.8 — has even the potential to do so,” wrote Times reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal.

“If you have a fertility rate of 1.2 or 1.3 you need to do something about it — it’s really quite a problem,” said Vienna Institute Demographer Tomas Sobotka. “You have labor problems, economic problems and steep rates of population decline.”

A recent RAND Corporation report concluded that the declining birth rate will have dire consequences: “These developments could pose significant barriers to achieving the European Union goals of full employment, economic growth and social cohesion.” Lawmakers in almost all countries have pushed for greater incentives to improve fertility rates.

Meanwhile newer Eastern EU member countries have experienced marked reductions in birth rates, with an alarming 1.2 children average per woman for the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Latvia and Poland – lower even than Western Europe’s record-setting Spain, Greece and Italy, which have all had 1.3 births per woman for at least a decade.

Over the next 40 years the Czech Republic will see a reduction in population from its current 10 million to 8 million. Parliament there voted unanimously this year to double maternity leave payments for women. Every political party in this year’s elections had platforms on “family issues.”

Germany is likely to lose a fifth of its 82.5 million people in the next 40 years. Sociologist Ben Wattenberg, in his book, Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future, warned, “Never in the last 650 years, since the time of the Black Plague, have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long, in so many places.”

The changing role of women away from childbirth toward careers is cited by Rosenthal as a significant factor.

See the New York Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/04/world/europe/04prague.html...

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
EU Commissioner calls on Europeans to have More Children
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/aug/05081006.html
Newsweek Exposes Real Population Crisis: Mass World Depopulation
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/sep/04092201.html
Germany Acknowledges Impending Pension System Collapse from Low Population
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/jul/04072205.html

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