The Hope of Europe's Economy in Demographic Decline

As Germany's population ages, the number of children is dropping precipitously. Now people under 18 make up only 16.5 percent of the country’s population, the lowest rate in Europe. _local.de

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Germany is the bulwark of Europe's economic system, but for how much longer? As the shrinking cohorts move up through the age ranks, the ability of Germany's economy to sustain itself -- much less the struggling PIIGS -- is likely to shrivel away.

Officials worry that the lower number of young people in Europe could put its social systems under strain in the future because there will be fewer taxpayers to fund care for the elderly. Roughly one in four Germans are pensioners today, and 10 percent are affected by poverty.


Neighbouring countries have put programmes in place to boost birth rates with mixed success. In France, children make up about 22 percent of the population, while in Belgium, Great Britain and the Netherlands, about 20 percent of the population are people under 18.


Germany has yet to find a solution to its demographic difficulties, although the government is attempting to expand day care for children under three in an effort to take pressure off working parents. It has also introduced up 14 months in generous parental leave.


But while countries grapple with boosting the number of children, they are also confronted with increasing poverty. In Germany, roughly 15 percent of children were living in poverty in 2008 even before the toughest part of the economic crisis; an increase of about one percent from two years earlier. _local.de

Poverty among families with children in Germany is growing, because a growing proportion of children born in Germany are born to poor immigrant families. The same is true, of course, anywhere in Europe where immigrants are recruited from the third world. Besides raising poverty rates, crime and imprisonment rates are beginning to edge up as well.

The reality of the non-fungible nature of populations is just beginning to dawn on the non-politically correct segment of modern populations.