US prophets of Europe’s doom are half wrong - by Gideon Rachman
Europeans of a nervous disposition should probably avoid going into bookshops on their next visit to the US. If they venture inside, they will come across an array of titles with a blood-curdlingly bleak view of their continent’s future.few Europeans would recognise themselves in this distorting mirror held up from the other side of the Atlantic. And yet – tempting as it was to toss all these books into the bin and go out for a drink in the midst of my doomed civilisation (one might as well enjoy what little time is left) – it is impossible completely to dismiss the American prophets of European doom. Strip away the hysteria and the hype and they make two serious points.
First, European fertility rates have fallen well below the rate of 2.1 children per woman needed for a population to remain stable. Across the European Union, the average fertility rate is now about 1.5. This downward spiral in the population is self-reinforcing, since Europe will have fewer and fewer women of reproductive age in the future. The second point is that the Muslim population of Europe is rising sharply at the same time as the white, European population is falling. The American pessimists argue that this is a recipe for social turmoil, or worse.
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