Europe is a dying continent.
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3580
Trevor Wagener
Europe is a http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3600 to produce the next generation has created a looming demographic crisis.
According to research by both the CIA and the U.N., every single member of the European Union has a http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1639 per woman. In the CIA World Factbook, Germany had a birthrate of 1.36 children per woman in 2007, and Spain and Italy had birthrates of 1.29. At such low levels of fertility, within 100 years, those three nations would have populations 80 percent lower than they are today. And Germany, Italy and Spain are far from alone: Every single industrialized country in Europe has a birthrate below 1.9 children per woman. The average birthrate of the European Union as a whole is approximately 1.5 children per woman — and that number is artificially inflated by the presence of millions of highly fertile non-European immigrants in the major urban centers of Europe. Even if one ignores the statistical noise presented by the inclusion of millions of outliers, Europe faces a serious problem. Without a major shift in the current fertility trends, industrialized Europe will see its native population decline by about three-fourths over the 21st century. No civilization has ever recovered from such a population decline, and never before has such a decline been entirely voluntary.
Europeans are not becoming less fertile as a consequence of war, or famine, or disease, but rather as a consequence of their Western, consumerist lifestyles. Some, such as social critic Mark Steyn, have suggested that European civilization is in the middle of committing voluntary demographic suicide, and it’s not hard to see why: A civilization that is producing a tiny succeeding generation and shows no signs of attempting to remedy the problem is violating fundamental Darwinist principles of gene propagation.
There is, of course, a counterargument: Europe’s population has not been declining. In fact, most European nations have shown modest population growth thanks to a huge influx of immigrants from developing nations. Some economists have argued that because the infertility of Europeans is balanced by the high fertility of its immigrants, there will be no noticeable effects from the failure of Caucasians in Europe to produce offspring. If the population as a whole remains stable, the argument goes, economic growth will not be affected, and the European quality of life will likely remain constant. Europe could thus theoretically solve its demographic woes by promoting immigration.
Unfortunately, there are some major holes in that argument. Labor capital is not stable: Native Europeans tend to be highly educated and possess a varied skill set due to Europe’s laudable educational system, while the immigrant populations replacing the native populations are by and large less well educated. Crime levels are also not holding constant, and in Europe there has been an anti-immigrant backlash resulting from the widespread perception that immigrants are responsible for the increase in crime. There is also an 800-pound gorilla in the room: Given present trends, within about a century, Europe will cease to be a white, Christian continent.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/23784