Europes Population

Ray Hall, Paul White, Ray Hall, Paul White

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781135369477
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

First Published in 1995. In the final decade of the twentieth century, two common themes of public debate and of academic discussion in the social sciences have concerned futures research, and the European scene in the context both of developments in the European Union and of post-Cold War changes in other parts of the continent. At the 1992 Annual Conference of the Institute of British Geographers, the Population Geography Study Group organized a session on the future of population change in Europe, bringing together these two major themes in the context of demographic change. The aim of Europe's population: towards the next century is to contribute to informed discussion of the demographic futures of Europe as a whole. The whole range of population geography is covered, including considerations of fertility and mortality, household and family structures, labour-force issues, population redistribution and international migration. The authors were each asked to look to the year 2000 and, where possible, beyond. The approach adopted eschews highly technical projections, instead highlighting issues and alternative scenarios within general contexts of societal and economic evolution. The authors have been drawn from several European countries, and the intended coverage is Europe-wide, although in certain chapters the paucity of current data from some countries (especially in eastern Europe) narrows the discussion to the countries of the European Union.

CHAPTER 1

Population change on the eve of the twenty-first century

RAY HALL & PAUL WHITE

The context for demographic change

Population events have significance at a wide diversity of scales. Childbirth, marriage, divorce, illness, death and migration are all intensely personal occurrences which are imprinted in the biography of those concerned—indeed, in its simplest sense, a human biography consists simply of demographic events: “hatches” and “despatches” (with “matches” on the way in many cases). Demographic events are central to the great turning-points in the life course, and have been recognized by anthropologists as being crucially ritualized as “passages” from one life-condition to another. European societies have generally ceased to celebrate the onset of puberty, menarche and menopause (these being specifically biological developments and thus permissive, rather than explicitly demographic), but most other demographic events are marked in societal ways—christenings and naming ceremonies, weddings, house-warming parties, funerals. And certain ethnic groups within present-day Europe have further societal acknowledgements of, for example, menarche in girls (Islamic societies) or arrival at adulthood (the Jewish bar mitzvah for boys, bat mitzvah for girls). Demographic events are thus overladen with societal and cultural meanings in many highly significant ways.

At the same time, many of these events, taken in aggregate, are of crucial significance in the evolution of wider structures of life. Births and in-migrations increase population sizes, whereas deaths and outmigrations reduce them. Given that such events are not generally randomly distributed throughout whole populations, the outcomes of population processes serve to produce a situation in which the components of populations (by gender, age, social status, ethnicity, and so on) are in a constant state of flux. Not only do demographic events taken in aggregate change population totals, they also change the size of the subgroups that make up such populations. Fertility, nuptiality and the propensity to migrate all show differentials between, for example, social classes and between different ethnicities. Death, apparently the great leveller, actually spares certain people longer than others.

These variations in the occurrence of birth, marriage, migration and death are themselves influenced by a complex series of contextual forces. Single events within individual families take place against a background of economic, social, cultural, educational and political, as well as personal, circumstances. Apparent elements of choice are, in reality, often highly constrained. In the demographic sphere human beings cannot be completely existential: they have neither the ability nor, perhaps, the desire to construct their own code of demographic behaviour. Societal norms and fashions are important, and replication of role models and “expected” behaviours are common.

To analyze population change at the aggregate level requires consideration of these broader contextual circumstances. Without it we can deal only with descriptions. Demographers have a range of highly sophisticated, largely statistical, models for investigating population change, yet the success of these models has been limited by a general reluctance to relate them to the evolving economic, political and societal contexts within which real populations operate. The real world does not come as “clean” as many mathematical models would like. This does not mean that demographic analysis is a fruitless task: it does mean that demographic predictions must be supplemented by more qualitative and evaluative considerations of circumstantial developments. Nowhere is this more important than when we look to future changes in population characteristics.

The significant issues in fin-de-siècle Europe

Throughout history there has been a tendency to regard the last decade of a century as in some way heralding both the end of the old and the instigation of a new beginning in a particularly significant fashion. Although we may not all hold a millenarian view about the coming of the year 2000, there seems nevertheless to be some special importance in looking forward into a new century. Within Europe there seem to be good grounds for doing so, related to some major developments and events of the latter years of the twentieth century. We should briefly review these. However, what is possible in an introductory chapter to an edited collection such as this is only a superficial listing of the major influences. Europe is a complex continent displaying a series of tensions between tendencies towards unity and leanings towards fragmentation. These influences are by no means present at all places, and may work differently in different societies and political systems.

POLITICAL CIRCUMSTANCES

The series of rapid political changes that resulted in the demise of the communist regimes of eastern Europe between 1989 and 1991 gave rise to a degree of triumphalism in certain Western circles. One of the most controversial (and misunderstood) statements arose through Francis Fukuyama’s suggestion that this was “the end of history” (Fukuyama 1989, 1992). This concept was intended to apply to the triumph of liberal democracy and the overall hegemony of capitalist free-market economic structures. In this Whiggish view of history, human endeavour is argued to have evolved to its conclusion in terms of the acceptance of a uniform set of underlying structural forces as the determinants of global political economy Leaving on one side the possibility that this is a narrow view that does not apply to large swathes of the less developed world, at least in political terms, the question has to be asked as to whether the end of “history” is now with us, and what this would imply. In global geopolitical terms post-war history has been written through superpower conflict which is now over, to be replaced by the concept of a “New World Order”.

Superpower conflict lay at the heart of political change and development in post-war Europe. A strong case can be made out for the post-war division of Europe as being behind such important developments as the Marshall Aid plan (launched by the USA to rebuild the democratic capitalist economies of Europe as bulwarks against communism); the creation of NATO; and the movement towards western European unity from the European Coal and Steel Community, through the European Economic Community to the European Union. Without the perception of an external political threat it is possible that the pace of the drive towards European unity will slow down. It is perhaps ironic that the European Community embarked on the ambitious task of deepening the relationships between the member states just at the time when political and consequent economic change in eastern Europe ushered in the competing issue of widening the Community (Singer & Wildavsky 1993). Despite the Maastricht Treaty, the years since 1989 have generally seen a weakening of the arguments for deepening the EU, and Germany in particular has reorientated much of its economic gaze away from the benefits of economic and political integration westwards and towards both the internal problems of reunification in 1990 and the possible economic pay-off from enlarging the Union and from investment in the former eastern Europe.

Even if Fukuyama’s major thesis is correct (and Fukuyama is not arguing that history with a small “h” will come to an end), this does not mean that geography will become an irrelevance. Indeed, as several have argued, states and territories may be redrawn and new political movements develop (Johnston 1994, Pattie 1994). The hegemony of liberal democracy and capitalism does not imply the end of geography. Capitalist development is spatially uneven development, and the resultant economic imbalances between economic areas lie at the root of some spatial flows, of which population migration is one of the most important.

A further outcome of the events of 1989–92 has been the removal of centralizing state forces in much of eastern Europe and the re-emergence of regionalism and ethnicity as crucial factors in political evolution. We have seen the break-up of the former Soviet Union, the splitting apart of Czechoslovakia, and the conflicts within former Yugoslavia. Each of these episodes has held, or will hold in the future, the potential for demographic consequences, particularly through migration, sometimes of refugee movement.

These are large-scale, often international, issues. Within individual states both national policies and emergent political ideologies have important effects. Demographic changes are influenced both directly and indirectly by government policies. The state plays crucial roles, through education, health, employment and social security policies, in influencing patterns of fertility, nuptiality and mortality. The exact nature of the effects are often poorly understood, reflecting the complexity of the interface between aggregate influences and individual activities that create demographic events. Throughout Europe governments of the late twentieth century have become aware of the implications of population ageing and possible declines for labour supply (Anon 1993) or for government expenditure, for example through pensions (Bichot 1993).

As important as actual policies, however, are trends in ideology within contemporary Europe. These are strongest in western Europe, but with the increasing Westernization of the East they are likely to spread. Common throughout are features such as a rising emphasis on individualism, the privatization of formerly community interests and ownership, and the spread of consumerism as the basis of individual ambition. Although many of these trends emanate from New Right political developments of the 1980s, certain political commentators of the right have begun to repudiate the outcomes and to call for a revival of the “common life” (Gray 1993). An increasing emphasis on “self” could be argued to lie at the heart of declining fertility trends over much of contemporary Europe, and any general vision of a dramatic return to above-replacement fertility seems unlikely, despite recent developments in Sweden where this has, in fact, come about.

In a very interesting exercise a group of social science commentators were recently asked to build scenarios for the future of Europe in the year 2020 under three major and competing political ideologies (Masser et al. 1992). The first was labelled a “growth scenario” and envisaged the dominant political goal as being economic expansion; the second, labelled an “equity” scenario, in which policies aim at reducing social and spatial inequalities; and a third, “environmental” scenario, associated with quality of life and “green” issues. The expert panel felt that the growth model was likely to dominate political thinking, and that in terms of its impact on population some interesting developments were likely. Population ageing would continue rapidly and continuous increases in productivity would be needed to sustain wealth generation, since the proportion of the population making up the active labour force would be falling. Average household sizes would continue to decline, with further family fragmentation and life-styles dominated by individually based consumerism. In such circumstances labour shortage would be a real concern, and could only be met by large-scale labour in-migration from elsewhere: demographic modelling suggests that the scale of inflow needed would be considerable (Lutz 1991).

The equity scenario also created a need for immigration, although at a lower level, and a reassertion of collective values (associated with possible increases in fertility) was seen as possible. However, it was only the environment scenario that was felt to lead to stability in labour demand and supply, with the possibility of an increase in fertility levels once again to a level where immigration would not be needed.

At every scale, future political change will prove a crucial controlling influence on demographic change in Europe, just as it has done over the recent past. However, political developments will themselves take place within an economic context that, at present, presents a somewhat confused picture.

ECONOMIC CIRCUMSTANCES

Much has been written about contemporary economic globalization; new international divisions of labour; the switch from production to consumption as an economic basis in various western European core economies; and the potential for a fifth Kondratieff wave of growth. Much established analysis of these phenomena in the European context took place under the East/West division of the continent or in the early period of political change (Fröbel et al. 1980, Wallerstein 1991). The European implications of economic restructuring, however, now include the processes of absorption of newly market-orientated economies in east-central Europe into a wider economic system. This is already bringing considerable disruption at several scales, altering the life-chances of individuals and influencing them in demographic decisionmaking.

Economic restructuring is spatially biased, with patterns of winning and losing sectors and regions. It should not be thought that regional inequalities were unknown under state socialist systems, but as parts of eastern Europe are absorbed into the wider European space-economy as semi-peripheries the overall patterns of regional economic wealth and growth are likely to alter. Germany becomes even more of a central pivot within the European economy, and once the economic problems of German reunification are out of the way there is likely to be a rapid redrawing of the familiar maps of economic potential and location in Europe (Keeble 1989). One further aspect of such change is likely to relate to technological developments, for example in terms of super-fast rail networks, or further innovation in telecommunications and the information economy (Hall 1987). Places are likely to be drawn together in time and ease of communications and access, while at the same time remaining different in economic structure, political orientation and social and ethnic complexity.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

Reference has already been made to increasing features of individualism and the fragmentation of earlier versions of community and society. Given the demographic significance of these issues, as highlighted at the start of this chapter, key future influences on population change will result from various of the tensions identified.

The movement of many European economies into a post-industrial phase has been accompanied by the rise of post-modernity as a social and cultural phenomenon, and by the validation of certain quasiexistentialist terms of validation for individual and group behaviour. Gender equality is more apparent in some areas of Europe than others, whereas racism is a general feature that is expressed differently in different societies; attitudes to alternative sexualities are variable. Changes in the future labelling of core and peripheral (vulnerable or marginalized) elements in society will have important but unpredictable influences on population change, affecting, for example, future household constructions, fertility, nuptiality, the possible demographic “assimilation” of ethnic minorities, and the committal of resources to certain defined “problems”.

Many commentators agree that social polarization will be an increasing issue over the coming decades (Hamnett 1994), resulting from the coalescence of economic, political, ideological and social trends. Certain groups and individuals get an increased level of choices, whereas others face highly constrained futures with little real prospect of improvement in their conditions. The geographical significance of social polarization is manifest in phenomena such as counterurbanization and gentrification, in both of which processes those in society with the economic power to satisfy their preferences for residential locations are able to do so whereas those with no such power become ghettoized into declining industrial areas, suburbs and inner-city districts of economic stagnation, under-investment and decay. Although the future may not hold a continuation of counterurbanization as we have seen it over the past two decades, the basic element of individual decisions on location on which it has rested will still be present for many in society.

With the reduction in state intervention in housing markets, and with general trends of privatization in service provision, the overall levels of support for the poor and for other marginalized groups will decrease, at a time when the size of such groups will almost certainly increase (for example through ageing, and through the growth of ethnic minority communities). Social issues will therefore reflect demographic changes as well as political and economic forces.

THE WIDER CONTEXT

European changes have a global context, and it is important that we should recognize that forces and influences in distant locations will have an impact on European population changes. Recent political change has not been confined to eastern Europe. A feature of the early 1990s has been the move to democratization in Africa (which might in part be used to support Fukuyama’s thesis), which may change the course of the economic structures as well as the political realities of that continent. Elsewhere what has been characterized as a rise of Islamic fundamentalism has significance not just for the rimland countries around Europe but for many of the populations of immigrant origin living within (predominantly western) Europe itself.

Two books by the historian Paul Kennedy have explored some of the wider themes that may underpin future global change. In the first of these Kennedy (1988) explored the relationships between economic and military strength since the sixteenth century, and argued that the ultimate costs of the desire to retain military supremacy lie in the diversion of an increasing proportion of resources into defence expenditure and the slowing of economic growth. Writing in the late 1980s, Kennedy saw this process as currently operating in the USA, whereas in the Asian-Pacific realm economic growth was leading to the creation of economic, without military, hegemony for the Japanese: the economic centre of gravity for the world economy might increasingly shift to East Asia, with economic consequences for Europe and the USA.

Since The rise and fall of the Great Powers was published, the end of the Cold War has brought a new situation. The “peace dividend”, painful at first since it might involve large-scale unemployment in certain areas of the military-industrial complex, could produce a reorientation of productive innovation and renewed economic growth in wealth-generating industries in Europe. Against this, however, must be placed the two phenomena already referred to: the rise of consumption rather than production as the economic base, and the incipient decline and ageing of European populations.

In his more recent book, Preparing for the twenty-first century (1993), Kennedy puts demographic issues at the forefront, starting with a re-examination of the relevance (perhaps postponed until now) of Malthus’ ideas at the world scale. Kennedy sees western Europe’s own demographic problems as being the “greying” of its own population, and the new pressures set up by circumstances operating outside the region—in eastern Europe and beyond. As Kennedy puts it:

Far from being something that Europe can safely ignore, global demographic trends can affect the social order, delay (or reverse) the opening of the EC’s internal barriers, and even influence its foreign policy. (Kennedy 1993:276)

The extensive publicity given in the Western media to the 1994 World Population Conference in Cairo attests to the growing salience of demographic issues on the political agenda.

Predicting population change

Demographers have available to them a highly sophisticated set of mathematical and statistical models on which to base discussions of future developments. However, the technical detail of such projections often masks the fact that at root they are all based on several assumptions about the continuation of certain aspects of present patterns, or about changes to current demographic rates (such as fertility or mortality) that will occur in predictable and stable directions.

Many projection exercises in the past could be criticized as being demographically sophisticated but naïve in terms of their conceptualization of the economic, political and social context for future developments. Projections of future migration have been attempted relatively rarely in comparison with those dealing with fertility, mortality and age-structure. In recent years the narrow task of demographic projection has been broadened through the adoption of a wider social scientific approach in which possible social, economic and political scenarios are built up and explored in terms of their possible impacts on demographic variables. Examples of the discussion of such scenarios in a non-quantitative fashion have been given earlier in this chapter (Masser et al. 1992). The development of more quantitative scenario building has been associated with a research group working at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), and this has resulted in several major studies (Lutz 1991, 1994,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Contributors
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• References