Europe in 2026: nightmare or utopia?
By Bildt, C., 2016
Despite an avalanche of different proposals, a series of EU summits in early 2016 failed to reach agreement on a viable common EU refugee policy. As attempts to put an end to conflict in Syria failed, an increasing number of people fled across the Mediterranean, prompting first Austria, then Germany, then everyone else to reintroduce national border controls. The Schengen zone de facto collapsed. As a consequence, tensions built up in the Balkans, with direct armed confrontation along the border between Greece and Macedonia.
The collapse of the Schengen zone also caused the general political climate in the EU to decline. In early April of 2016, a tide of anti-EU sentiment led to a referendum in the Netherlands, which held the EU Presidency, with a vote to turn down the EU-Ukraine agreement. The Kremlin praised "the wisdom" of the Dutch people.
EUROPOP2013
User Rating: 5 / 5
By EUROSTAT, 2013
EUROPOP2013 (European Population Projections, base year 2013) contains statistical information on population projections for the main scenario and its four variants with reference to:
- projected 1st January population by sex and single year of age;
- the main dataset of assumptions: age-specific fertility rates, age-specific mortality rates and international net migration figures, as well as the assumptions used to produce the variants;
- approximated values of the life expectancy by age and sex corresponding to the assumptions of main scenario and higher life expectancy variant;
- total numbers of projected live births and deaths for the main scenario and all variants;
- projected population structure indicators: shares of various age groups in total population, old-age dependency ratios and median age of population.
The time horizon covered in EUROPOP2013 is 2013 until 2080 for the main scenario and zero migration variant, and 2013 until 2060 for the higher life expectancy, reduced migration and lower fertility variants.
EUROPOP2013 comprises data for all EU28 Member States as well as data for Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.
For more information and analysis of the current and previous population projections undertaken by Eurostat, go to website.
World population prospects - 2015 revision
United Nations, 2015
Understanding the demographic changes that are likely to unfold over the coming years, as well as the challenges and opportunities that they present for achieving sustainable development, is important for designing and implementing the post-2015 development agenda. The 2015 Revision of World Population Prospects is the twenty-fourth round of official United Nations population estimates and projections that have been prepared by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. The 2015 Revision builds on the previous revision by incorporating additional results from the 2010 round of national population censuses as well as findings from recent specialized demographic and health surveys that have been carried out around the world. The 2015 Revision provides the demographic data and indicators to assess population trends at the global, regional and national levels and to calculate many other key indicators commonly used by the United Nations system.
 Word population prospects - 2015 revision | [ ] |
The End of “Lowest-Low” Fertility?
Joshua R. Goldstein, Tomáš Sobotka, and Aiva Jasilioniene, 2009.
Period fertility rates fell to previously unseen low levels in a large number of countries beginning in the early 1990s. The persistence of Total Fertility Rates under 1.3 raised the possibility of dramatic, rapid population aging as well as population decline. In an analysis of recent trends, we find, however, a widespread turn-around in so called “lowest-low” fertility countries. The reversal has been particularly vigorous in Europe. The number of countries with period total fertility rates less than 1.3 fell from 21 in 2003 to five in 2008, of which four (Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan) are in East Asia. Moreover, the upturn in the period TFR was not confined to lowest-fertility countries, but affected the whole developed world. We explore the demographic explanations for the recent rise in fertility stemming from fertility timing effects as well as economic, policy, and social factors. Although the current economic crisis may push down fertility in the short-run, we conclude that formerly lowest-low fertility countries should continue to see further increase in fertility as the transitory effects of shifts to later motherhood become less and less important.
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
A revised urban-rural typology. In: Eurostat regional yearbook 2010
Eurostat regional yearbook, 2010.
This chapter presents a new typology of predominantly rural, intermediate and predominantly urban regions based on a variation of the OECD methodology. The aim of this new typology is to provide a consistent basis for the description of predominantly rural, intermediate and predominantly urban regions in all Commission communications, reports and publications. This typology has been developed jointly by the following four different Directorates-General within the European Commission over the past two years: the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development, Eurostat, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the Directorate-General for Regional Policy.
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
Europe the continent with the lowest fertility.
The ESHRE Capri Workshop Group. 2010.
Although fertility rates are falling in many countries, Europe is the continent with the lowest total fertility rate (TFR). This review assesses trends in fertility rates, explores possible health and social factors and reviews the impact of health and social interventions designed to increase fertility rates.
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
Remote rural regions: how promixity to a city influences the performances of rural regions
Lewis Dijkstra & Hugo Poelman for EU-Regional Policy, 2008.
This short paper describes the characteristics of remote rural regions and how remoteness can be defined and measured. This new approach combines a new classification of remoteness, based on driving time to the closest city, with the OECD classification of regions into predominantly urban, intermediate and predominantly rural regions.
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
The determinants of international migration: Conceptualizing policy, origin and destination effects
Hein de Haas., DEMIG, 2011.
The effectiveness of migration policies has been widely contested in the face of their supposed failure to steer immigration and their hypothesized unintended, counter-productive effects. However, due to fundamental methodological and conceptual limitations, evidence has remained inconclusive. While the migration policy research is often descriptive and receiving-country biased, migration determinants research tends to be based on obsolete, theoretically void push-pull and gravity models which tend to omit crucial non-economic, sending-country and policy factors. More fundamentally, this state-of-the-art reveals a still limited understanding of the forces driving migration. Although there is consensus that macro-contextual economic and political factors and meso-level factors such as networks all play ‘some’ role, there is no agreement on their relative weight and mutual interaction. To start filling that gap, this paper outlines the contours of a conceptual framework for generating improved insights into the ways states and policies shape migration processes in their interaction with structural migration determinants in receiving and sending countries. First, it argues that the fragmented insights from different disciplinary theories can be integrated in one framework through conceptualizing virtually all forms of migration as a function of capabilities and aspirations. Second, to increase conceptual clarity it distinguishes the preponderant role of states in migration processes from the hypothetically more marginal role of specific immigration and emigration policies. Subsequently, it hypothesizes four different (spatial, categorical, inter-temporal, reverse flow) ‘substitution effects’ which can partly explain why polices fail to meet their objectives. This framework will serve as a conceptual guide for the DEMIG (The Determinants of International Migration) research project.
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
Leaving Matters: The Nature, Evolution and Effects of Emigration Policies.
Hein de Haas and Simona Vezzoli. DEMING. 2011.
Debates on migration policies are strongly focused on immigration control, revealing a general receiving-country bias in migration research. To fill this gap, this paper reviews the nature, evolution and effects of emigration policies. Only a declining number of strong, authoritarian states with closed economies are willing and capable of imposing blanket exit restrictions. Paradoxically, while an increasing number of, particularly developing, countries aspire to regulate emigration, their capability to do so is fundamentally and increasingly limited by legal, economic and political constraints. The attitude of states is often intrinsically ambiguous, as they face a complex trade-off between the perceived economic and political costs and benefits of emigration, in which who leaves greatly matters. This motivates states to adopt more subtle policies to encourage or discourage migration of particular skill, gender, age, regional or ethnic groups. Since state policies simultaneously constrain and enable migration of different groups to different destinations, states can play a significant role in structuring emigration through influencing the (initial) composition and spatial patterns of emigration. Even ‘laissez-faire’ policies require active state agency to create the structural conditions for ‘free’ emigration. However, the effect of emigration policies on overall volume and long-term trends of migration seems limited or even insignificant because of the preponderance of other economic, social and cultural migration determinants. This review reveals the need to improve insights into how states and policies shape migration processes in their interaction with other migration determinants in sending and receiving countries.
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
The growth of the working age population: differences between rural and urban regions across Europe
Joop de Beer. Rob van der Erf and Corina Huisman. NEUJOBS 2011.
Differences in the growth of the working age population are affected by the direction and size of migration flows, cohort turnover (the balance between the inflow of young people and the outflow of older people) and mortality. This paper aims to analyse differences in the effects of migration and cohort turnover on changes in the size of the working age population between rural and urban regions on the basis of demographic data for NUTS 2 regions. For this purpose we develop a rural‐urban classification on the basis of the classification for NUTS 3 regions published by Eurostat.
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
Demography of genotype: failure of the limited life-span paradigm in drosophila melanogaster
Curtsinger JW, Fukui HH, Townsend DR, Vaupel JW. 1992.
Experimental systems that are amenable to genetic manipulation can be used to address fundamental questions about genetic and nongenetic determinants of longevity. Analysis of large cohorts of ten genotypes of Drosophila melanogaster raised under conditions that favored extended survival has revealed variation between genotypes in both the slope and location of age-specific mortality curves. More detailed examination of a single genotype showed that the mortality trajectory was best fit by a two-stage Gompertz model, with no age-specific increase in mortality rates beyond 30 days after emergence. These results are contrary to the limited life-span paradigm, which postulates well-defined, genotype-specific limits on life-span and brief periods of intense and rapidly accelerating mortality rates at the oldest age.
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
Does border enforcement deter unauthorized immigration? The case of Mexican migration to the United States of America
Wayne A. Cornelius and Idean Salehyan. Regulation & Governance, 2007
This paper asks whether the migration decisions of unauthorized Mexican immigrants to the USA have been influenced by stronger US border enforcement efforts since 1993 that have sharply increased the physical risk and financial cost of illegal immigration. These measures were supposed to have decreased the probability of successful entry, thereby lowering the expected benefits of migration. We carried out a logistic regression analysis of data from a recent survey of 603 returned migrants and potential first-time migrants in rural Mexico.
Our findings indicate that tougher border controls have had remarkably little influence on the propensity to migrate illegally to the USA. Political restrictions on immigration are far outweighed by economic and family-related incentives to migrate. An alternative, labor-market approach to immigration control with higher probability of effectiveness is outlined.
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
The Long Walk to School: International education goals in historical perspective
Clemens, M.CGD, 2004.
Raising school enrollment, like economic development in general, takes a long time. This is partly because, as a mountain of empirical evidence now shows, economic conditions and slowly-changing parental education levels determine children's school enrollment to a greater degree than education policy interventions. A succession of international meetings has nevertheless adopted a litany of utopian international goals for universal school enrollment and gender parity in education based on the idea that a correct education policy backed by sufficient cash could achieve the goals in short order. The latest of these, the Millennium Development Goals, call for universal primary schooling and full gender parity by 2015.
This work quantifies how long it has taken countries rich and poor to make the transition towards high enrollments and gender parity. There are three central lessons. First, there is a remarkable uniformity of experience in the rates of enrollment increases, a reality from which which the various rounds of goals appear entirely detached. Second, many countries that have not raised enrollments fast enough to meet the goals have in fact raised enrollments extraordinarily rapidly by historical standards and deserve celebration rather than condemnation. The very few poor countries that have raised enrollment figures at the rates envisioned by the goals have done so in many cases by accepting dramatic declines in schooling quality, failing large numbers of students, or other practices that cast doubt on the sustainability or exportability of their techniques. Third, aid-supported education policies can help within limits, and their performance should be judged in the context of country-specific, historically-grounded goals. But a country's broader development strategy outside the classroom matters much more than education policy.
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
Human tide: the real migration crisis
Christian Aid report, 2007.
A world struggling to cope with the largest enforced movement of people in its history. Tens of millions displaced, living in parlous conditions – their very futures threatened by the enormity of the problem. That was the dire situation at the end of the Second World War, and Christian Aid – known at the time as Christian Reconstruction in Europe – was founded to help address it. Then, 50 years ago, came the fi rst Christian Aid Week – a mass mobilisation of supporters to raise funds for the continuing refugee crisis in Europe and beyond. The roots of the organisation run deep into the tragedy of forced migration. So it is with some authority that we now issue a stark warning about accelerating rates of displacement in the 21st century. As the effects of climate change join and exacerbate the conflicts, natural disasters and development projects that drive displacement, we fear that an emerging migration crisis will spiral out of control. Unless urgent action is taken, it threatens to dwarf even that faced by the warravaged world all those decades ago.
Christian Aid predicts that, on current trends, a further 1 billion people will be forced from their homes between now and 2050. We believe forced migration is the most urgent threat facing poor people in developing countries.
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
Ageing populations: the challenges ahead
Kaare Christensen, Gabriele Doblhammer, Roland Rau, and James W Vaupel,. LANCET, 2009.
If the pace of increase in life expectancy in developed countries over the past two centuries continues through the 21st century, most babies born since 2000 in France, Germany, Italy, the UK, the USA, Canada, Japan, and other countries with long life expectancies will celebrate their 100th birthdays. Although trends differ between countries, populations of nearly all such countries are ageing as a result of low fertility, low immigration, and long lives. A key question is: are increases in life expectancy accompanied by a concurrent postponement of functional limitations and disability? The answer is still open, but research suggests that ageing processes are modifiable and that people are living longer without severe disability. This finding, together with technological and medical development and redistribution of work, will be important for our chances to meet the challenges of ageing populations.
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
A realist view of aging mostality and future longevity.pdf
Bruce A. Carnes, S. Jay Olshansky. PDR, 2007
Differences in methodology and philosophy have led scientists analyzing the same mortality data to arrive at very different conclusions about the behavior of mortality trajectories, the nature of aging, and the future of human longevity. This note describes the authors’views on these issues, which taken together can be termed a “realist” position. In this view, life expectancy is unlikely to exceed an average of 85 years absent significant advances in the control of aging. We identify a number of myths that have been attached to our work: 1) Reaching an average life expectancy of 85 years is a pessimistic outlook for human longevity, 2) Species possess an intrinsic mortality schedule that cannot be modified by human intervention, 3) Realist scenarios of the future course of human longevity are based on notions of biological determinism, 4) Realists assert that there is an age beyond which there can be no survivors, 5) Hypothesized biological barriers to longer life spans have been scientifically studied and refuted, and 6) Realists claim that life expectancy at birth cannot exceed 85 years. In dispelling these myths, we hope to provide a more accurate representation of our school of biodemographic thought.
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
World Urbanization Prospects - The 2011 Revision
UNITED NATIONS, DESA, 2012.
The 2011 Revision presents estimates and projections of the total, urban and rural populations of the world for the period 1950-2050. The results are shown for development groups, six major areas (i.e., Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Northern America and Oceania) and 21 regions. Data are further presented for the 231 countries or areas of the world. The 2011 Revision also provides estimates and projections of the population of urban agglomerations with at least 750,000 inhabitants in 2011 for the period 1950-2025. Estimates of the proportion of the population living in urban areas and the population of cities are based on national statistics. Population censuses are the most commonly used sources of data on the proportion urban and the population of cities. However, in some countries, the data used as the basis for estimation are obtained from population registers or administrative statistics.
See accompanying tables content:
•Percentage Of Population Residing In Urban Areas, 1950-2050 (XLS).
•Urban Population, 1950-2050 (XLS).
•Average annual rate of change of the urban population, 1950-2050 (XLS).
•Average annual rate of change of the percentage urban, 1950-2050 (XLS).
•The 30 Largest Urban Agglomerations 1950-2025 (XLS).
•Net number of migrants by major area, region and country, 1950-2100 (XLS).
Go to website Download tables | [ ] |
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
OECD extended regional typology: The economic performance of remote rural regions
Monica Brezzi, Lewis Dijkstra AND Vicente Ruiz, 2011.
To account for differences among rural and urban regions, the OECD s established a regional typology, classifying TL3 regions as predominantly urban (PU), intermediate (IN) or predominantly rural (PR) (OECD, 2009). This typology, based essentially on the percentage of regional population living in urban or rural communities, has proved to be meaningful to better explain regional differences in economic and labour market performance. However this typology does not take into account the presence of economic agglomerations if they happen to be in neighbouring regions. For example, a region is classified as rural or intermediate regardless its distance from a large urban centre where labour market, access to services, education opportunities and logistics for firms can be wider. Previous work reveals great heterogeneity in economic growth among rural regions and the distance from a populated centre could be a significant factor explaining these differences. For the latter, the OECD regional typology is extended to include an accessibility criterion. This criterion is based on the driving time needed for at least half of the population in a region to reach a populated centre of with 50 000 or more inhabitants. The resulting classification consists of four types of regions: Predominantly Urban (PU), Intermediate (IN), Predominantly Rural Close to a city (PRC) and Predominantly Rural Remote (PRR). For the time being, the extended typology has only been computed for regions in North America (Canada, Mexico and the United States) and Europe.
The extended typology is used to compare the dynamics of population and labour markets. Remote rural regions show a stronger decline in population and a faster ageing process than rural regions close to a city. The remoteness of rural regions is in fact a significant factor explaining regional outflows of working age population, confirming that this extended typology captures the economic distance from market and services. Remote rural regions appear economically more fragile: lower employment rates (Canada and Mexico) and economic output (Europe).
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
How Long Will We Live?
John Bongaarts, Population Council, 2006.
Since 1800 life expectancy at birth has doubled from about 40 years to nearly 80 years in high-income countries. Pessimists expect these improvements to end soon because we are approaching biological limits to longevity, whereas optimists predict continued rapid improvements without limits. To shed light on this controversy, past trends in the juvenile, background, and senescent components of life expectancy are examined in 16 high-income countries. Large increases in conventional life expectancy before 1950 are found to be primarily attributable to reductions in juvenile and background mortality. After 1950 the rate of improvement in life expectancy slowed because declines in juvenile and background mortality slowed, but senescent mortality fell more rapidly than before, thus becoming the main cause of rising life expectancy at birth. The role of smoking in the past half-century is also quantified. In the future, background mortality and juvenile mortality will have little or no impact on longevity because they have reached very low levels. There is, however, no evidence of approaching limits and life expectancy will likely improve at a rate of approximately 1.5 years per decade owing to continued declines in senescent mortality.
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
Economic Growth and the Demographic Transition
David E. Bloom, David Canning and Jaypee Sevilla, NBER, 2001.
For decades, economists and social thinkers have debated the influence of population change on economic growth. Three alternative positions define this debate: that population growth restricts, promotes, or is independent of economic growth. Proponents of each explanation can find evidence to support their cases. All of these explanations, however, focus on population size and growth. In recent years, however, the debate has under-emphasized a critical issue, the age structure of the population (that is, the way in which the population is distributed across different age groups), which can change dramatically as the population grows. Because peopleís economic behavior varies at different stages of life, changes in a countryís age structure can have significant effects on its economic performance. Nations with a high proportion of children are likely to devote a high proportion of resources to their care, which tends to depress the pace of economic growth. By contrast, if most of a nationís population falls within the working ages, the added productivity of this group can produce a "demographic dividend" of economic growth, assuming that policies to take advantage of this are in place. In fact, the combined effect of this large working-age population and health, family, labor, financial, and human capital policies can create virtuous cycles of wealth creation. And if a large proportion of a nationís population consists of the elderly, the effects can be similar to those of a very young population. A large share of resources is needed by a relatively less productive segment of the population, which likewise can inhibit economic growth. After tracing the history of theories of the effects of population growth, this report reviews evidence on the relevance of changes in age structure for economic growth. It also examines the relationship between population change and economic development in particular regions of the world: East Asia; Japan; OECD, North America and Western Europe; South-central and Southeast Asia; Latin America; Middle East and North Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Finally, it discusses the key policy variables that, combined with reduced fertility and increases in the working-age population, have contributed to economic growth in some areas of the developing world.
| Donwload to document | [ ] |
