New figures from Eurostat [1], the statistical office of the European Union, confirm the growing demographic crisis facing Europe. Last year, deaths across the EU outnumbered births by almost 1.2m, and this is only going to get worse. Births have not outnumbered deaths since 2012.
This is a consequence of fertility rates being well below replacement level across the continent and in some cases for decades.
At the beginning of 2023, according to Eurostat, there were 448.8 million people living in the European Union. The only reason this is little different from 20 years ago is because of immigration.
The average number of births per 1,000 persons living in the EU has dropped from 10.6 in 2008 to 8.7 in 2022.
One way of analysing fertility trends is to look at how many babies are born to mothers aged 40 and older compared to all babies born in a year. It shows the degree to which people are delaying having children.
In Ireland in 2022, 11.2pc of all births in 2022 were to mothers aged 40 and over, the highest in Europe. This has soared from 3.4pc in 2002.
Across the EU, the figure was 6pc in 2022, meaning many women in Ireland are waiting a particularly long time to have children, for whatever reason.
The proportion of births to mothers aged at least 40 in the EU as a whole was 2.2pc in 2002.
In Ireland, the mean age of first-time mothers is the third highest in Europe, at 31.5 years. The EU average is 29.7 years.
Ireland used to have the highest fertility rate in the EU – 1.97 births per woman in 2002 – but now it has decreased significantly. The current value (1.56) is slightly higher than the European average (1.46) but way below what is needed to ensure a natural balance between births and deaths, which is 2.1 births per woman.
Among EU countries, France has currently the highest total fertility rate (1.79), followed by Romania (1.71) and Bulgaria (1.65). The lowest rates were found in Malta (1.08), Spain (1.16) and Italy (1.24).
While the population is growing, due to immigration and people are living longer, there are ever fewer young people.
In the last 20 years, the percentage of people aged 0 to 19 years of age across the EU declined from 22.6pc to 20.1pc. Over the same period, the share of persons aged 65 and over increased in all EU countries 16.2 to 21.3.
Over the past twenty years, the Irish population grew by a massive 32.9pc, from 3.7 million in 2003 to 5.27 million last year. Much of this is immigration-driven. To put this into perspective, the total population of the EU increased by only 4pc during the same period.
In Ireland, births still outnumber deaths, although the gap between the two has halved in the last ten years [2]. In due course, given our low fertility rate, deaths will outnumber births as elsewhere.
The European demographic crisis, which is already here, will affect Ireland as well, even before ours hits us directly, simply because our fate is so tied to Europe’s in multiple ways. It is time we began to have a serious discussion in Ireland about this topic.