Most industrial countries have already settled into a pattern of gradually increasing life expectancy and continued sub-replacement fertility. In these countries, the imminent prospect of population declines and rapid growth in older age groups are already stimulating intense discussion. The debate ranges far from demographics and has touched on race relations, welfare policies, and the state of marital relations in two-income families.

That is almost all that is said about the industrial countries in the excellent United Nations Population Fund report State of the World Population 2002, but this little paragraph contains great drama. We are used to thinking about "the population question" as a matter of population pressure, and so it remains, in particular in Africa. But we must now handle a very different problem simultaneously, one of prospective population collapse, in particular in Europe.

European populations are no longer reproducing themselves. In at least fourteen countries, population numbers have started to fall, and in the rest there is zero or near-zero growth. By 2050, the European population is predicted to be down to 600 million, from 725 million today. Centuries of population growth are turning to decline. We are at a historical watershed.

The rest of the report is about poverty, population and underdevelopment. There is not and never was a crisis of overpopulation in the world. From 1960 to 2000, the world population doubled in size, from 3 to 6 billion. It is now clear that it will not double again. In 2050, there will be between 9 and 10 billion and that will be near the top of it. At some time in the second half of the century, the numbers will start to go down. The population explosion will be a short 100-year episode in human history.

It was caused by better living standards, in particular better health, lower child mortality and higher life expectancy. In most parts of Asia and Latin America, population growth is already moderate.

There is, however, a population crisis in some areas. Africa (between the Arab north and South Africa) is on course for the population to double again. The most underdeveloped countries will possibly triple their population by 2050. The terrible thing is that some countries where people are the poorest are rich in land and resources, and less "overpopulated" than Europe. Their problem is not population, but bad government.

So far, mankind has flourished magnificently while multiplying in numbers. It is much richer today than fifty years ago, per head. Many countries have become affluent and hundreds of millions of people lifted out of poverty. Global capitalism and population mobility are making the one-world dream come true. African and Latin American art and music have conquered the world, as has Iranian, Indian and Japanese cinema. Human rights and democracy have become universal standards, and world government is in the making. But not all of mankind is flourishing. Europe is slipping out of progress and Africa is left behind.

For much of the twentieth century, population decline was waiting to happen in Europe. It was beginning to happen after the First World War, only to be pushed back by the unexpected baby boom after 1945. That enthusiasm for children, however, did not last. It took only twenty years to return to below-replacement birth rates, and decline has now set in.

If a population is to replace itself with stable numbers from one generation to the next, it must obviously produce enough children. In developed countries with low child mortality and high life expectancy, long-term population stability is attained with a birth rate of about 2.1 children per woman. In all of Europe today, only Albania has replacement fertility. Otherwise, Ireland is at the top with a birth rate of 2.0, then France with 1.8 and Norway and Denmark with 1.7. The Catholic countries of Southern Europe have very low birth rates, at around 1.2, which is also the average for the countries of Eastern Europe. Germany and Sweden: 1.3, Britain and Finland: 1.6.

The average birth rate in Europe is estimated at 1.34 children per woman. For technical, statisti-cal reasons this may possibly underestimate the real level of fertility, but if so hardly by more than one or two decimals. Present fertility is much below the replacement level. To illustrate: without emigration or immigration and with a stable birth rate of 1.5, a population would be reduced to about a half in 100 years, and with a birth rate of 1.2 to about 25 percent.

In that thought experiment and with current

birth rates, the descendants of the 82 million people now living in Germany would at the end of this century be fewer than 40 million, and the descendants of the 57 million in today's Italy fewer than 20 million.

Could that happen? We can make no reliable predictions for so long a period ahead, and population trends can change rapidly and unexpectedly. It might seem unlikely that the Europeans would simply sit by and see their numbers dwindle. We know from survey research that they at least say they want to have more children than they are actually having, and one might hope they would find ways to make that possible.

On the other hand, except for the post-1945 baby boom, birth rates have been low for a very long time, and it would seem improbable that they could climb to replacement levels. For that to happen, the norm would have to be the three-child family and that looks unlikely to emerge. The reason is that modern conventions for family life are built around the now firm idea, and economic necessity, of both parents working and earning. That form of family life is not easily compatible with more than two children. To get beyond the two-child norm would require changes in lifestyle which do not seem to be on people's agenda. As long as most parents think of two children as the ideal number, many will invariably fall short of that "target," and the resulting average birth rate will be down towards 1.5, or lower if as at present, the proportion of women who remain childless continues to go up. (Among young British women now, one in four or five seems set to remain childless.)

Looking into the future, then, very different scenarios can be envisaged: a radical change in attitudes and lifestyles in favour of larger families, along with new social policies to encourage and enable parents to raise three or four children; or continued low birth rates following through to serious population decline. The first possibility cannot be ruled out. There is, as yet, no real awareness in Europe that we are on the threshold of population collapse. Actual population numbers are just starting very slowly to go down. Once it becomes apparent that the numbers are likely to dive, attitudes may change. That happened in the l920s and 30s when the fear of population decline took hold. Out of that fear grew for example, the Scandinavian pro-family welfare state and French pro-natalist social policy.

But could attitudes change enough? What made the post-1945 baby boom possible was that the working mother had not become the social norm. Women were available, so to speak, to have more children. Might we today see a return to the one-breadwinner family?

Very unlikely. For women this would be to give up a century of emancipation. Family economics has adjusted to two salaries so that giving up one would not be affordable even if desired.

Will political attitudes change and more family-friendly social policies be adopted?

Possibly, but with difficulty. Except in Scandinavia, the required change would be formidable. Governments are losing the power to raise new taxes for additional outlays. Family policies are an uncertain investment, because parents cannot be bribed into having more children without letting themselves be bribed to a change of lifestyle, and that would be expensive. The leading countries in family-friendly social policies are the Scandinavian ones. In Sweden the birth rate remains low in spite of all political effort; in Norway it is higher, but that is probably because of economic optimism in that oil-rich population.

The best guess would seem to be that low birth rates are here to stay for some considerable time, and that the Population Fund is right to say that we have "settled into a pattern of continued sub-replacement fertility." There is a further reason in support of this prediction. It takes a long time for low birth rates to translate into declining population numbers. Once that happens -- and we are now at that point -- further and accelerating decline (at least for a good while) is unavoidable by sheer demographic logic. Population decline may carry through to economic decline. People then see themselves living in an environment of decline. That breeds uncertainty and anxiety about the future; in our part of the world, people who are anxious about the future are anxious about having children. Population decline has started and these dynamics are starting to unfold.

Can we compensate for low birth rates by increasing immigration? Now we enter the minefield the Population Fund hints at in the paragraph quoted. The answer is no. Immigration is no substitute for babies. But there is another question implied about the desirability of immigration, and to that question our answer should be, yes - there will be immigration, it will increase, and we should welcome it.

To think we can solve our population problem by immigration is superficial and careless. There is something disturbingly arrogant in seeing the rest of the world as available for Europe to harvest for our needs. In an earlier imperial age, the Europeans saw Africa as a continent to which they could export their population surplus, and to which they could bring civilization in the process. Now, some people suggest that we can solve our population deficit by bringing poor people to our own lands, and again that we will thereby be doing the people we use a service. But policies built on arrogance are not morally sustainable.

Nor are they likely to work. It may seem a simple solution that when immigrants want to come in, Europeans need only open their borders, but beneath lurk difficult and uncomfortable questions. Do Europeans want immigrants? It does not look as if we do. Are we able to accommodate a higher level of immigration? The low level of immigration we now have, much of it internal European migration, is already causing social disruption and political realignment to the Extreme Right. Will there be enough migrants who wish to come to Europe, will those who wish to come be those we need, and will we be able to attract them? There are other countries which need immigration: the USA and Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea. Many countries from which people emigrate today are growing economically and may soon hold on to their own labour power. What about emigration from Europe? If population decline is followed by economic decline, might not Europe become a region of emigration rather than immigration?

Serious demography does not envisage immigration to make up for low birth rates. The Population Fund certainly does not. Its prediction is for the European population to fall by 125 million by mid-century includes immigration. If that trend continues and we lose another 125 million in the second half of the century, Europe would be down to 475 million. If population decline has then taken hold and accelerated, there is the real possibility of the European population falling by half in a hundred years, immigration included. Those are big numbers. One hundred years is a short time. This would be population collapse.

Population change is the strongest of all forces in social development. It would be naive to think that standards of living and lifestyles would go untouched when there is shrinkage in the backbone of society.

Some consequences are unavoidable and contained in present trends, and we can predict them without a trace of doubt. Others are possible, much depending on whether the downward trend in population can be contained in time. On these further consequences we can only speculate, but that speculation must include the prospect of Europe falling into a downward spiral of economic and cultural decline.

Europe aims to unite and to be a major force in the world, but a force with a declining population is not one of increasing power. Is a weaker Europe good or bad? If our concern is with Europe and the future of Europe in the world, it is bad. If we say: so what, the world is not short of people - then we Europeans are saying that Europe does not really matter. What future for a united Europe whose population does not hold in its mind an idea of Europe?

In Europe today, Germany is the most populous country (82 million), followed by Britain, France and Italy with each short of 60 million. By present trends, France and Germany are set to change places in the population pecking order. Britain will more or less hold its position and Italy will become quite insignificant in population terms. Would 40 or 50 million Germans be less happy for not belonging to a tribe of 80 million? Individually possibly not. but asa nation, certainly. A nation of many people is a big power, one of fewer people a lesser power. Would 500 million Europeans be unhappy for not being 800 million? The answer is the same. Whether it be good or bad in Europe that France overtakes Germany in population and power is anyone's opinion. Would Italy still be Italy with only 20 million people?

Changes in the social composition of Europe are on the cards. There will be relatively fewer Southern and Eastern Europeans and relatively more Western and Northern ones. Internal migration is likely to reinforce these trends. We are likely to see selective migration, so that the best labour power moves out of backward areas leaving them yet more depressed. (This is already happening, for example, in internal mobility within Germany from east to west.) Immigrant populations will be relatively more numerous, and Europe more multicultural.

Europe is getting smaller, different in national, regional and social composition, more multicultural. Does this matter? Will it be a better or worse place for people to live? That depends on the spectre of economic and cultural decline. Parts of Europe are groaning under population pressure. Those of us who live in the South-East of England know this. So many people have crowded into this area -- one of the most densely populated in the world -- that no transport system is or will ever be able to meet their needs. The result is daily costs in stress and loss of time and business. Housing prices are so high that young people even with good salaries are excluded from the housing market. In consequence, a strange new form of genteel poverty has emerged -- young adults with plenty of money to spend but not enough to obtain property, and therefore all the more to spend. (This is what lies behind the emerging culture of single and childless lifestyles: family formation is not affordable and young people resign themselves to not wanting what they cannot have.) In South-East England we might think it a blessing that population numbers start to go down -- but it is in fact a curse.

An industrial or post-industrial economy is its population. When populations grow, economies grow; when they stagnate, economies stagnate; when they decline, economies decline.

After 1945, Germany was in ruins but in no time West Germany had reestablished itself as the pie-eminent economic force in Europe. It is now recognized that a strong contributing factor to the German Wirtschaftswunder was the influx of millions of Germans from Eastern Europe, which created the pressure that put the German economy back on its feet. The Japanese economy grew as long as its population grew. Now that population has stagnated (the Japanese birth rate is the same as the European average) and the Japanese economy is in stagnation. In the United States the economic fortunes of the North and the South have swung with migration: when migration was to the North, the North prospered, when to the South, the South prospered. The reason people stay in or move to the South-East of England is its vibrant economy, and it is that pressure of population that keeps it vibrant. The national economies which now look dynamic are those which are able to combine relatively high birth rates and relatively high immigration, such as the US and Australia. Europe is stuck in low growth and high unemployment. The European train is grinding to a halt as the German locomotive runs out of pulling power because of population stagnation, and will start to slip backwards as its population starts to fall. It is population that creates demand and pressure in a modern economy; when it starts to run out of people, it runs out of steam.

In three centuries of progress, Europe has produced an outstandingly rich culture of architecture, art, literature, music, freedom and democracy. What happens if Europe falls into economic decline? Will there be a surplus from which architecture and art can be commissioned? Will governments be able to support museums operas, theatres, and orchestras? What will happen to attitudes, confidence and trust? Will we be able to afford freedom? Will democracy survive if economies collapse? Where it was created and flourished, in ancient Athens, it fell like a house of cards when the economy gave in.

In moving from known to possible consequences we enter unknown territory. Population decline is something we have not experienced or centuries. We are over a hilltop and on a downward slope. This will in the course of a few short decades take us into a very different Europe from the one we know today. We cannot say for certain that it will also be a poorer Europe economically and culturally, but we need to hold up the possibility. We need to see that history is in the making, at a moment of fundamental change, which goes to the heart of what it is that drives societies and their development. Our whole experience is of social trends pointing upwards; we are in a very different society when they start to point downwards.

The Population Fund's report paints a frightening picture of underdevelopment. Almost half the world's people live on a budget of less than $2 a day, one in four on less than $1. The proportion of people living in poverty is going down. slowly, but the absolute numbers are stubbornly stable. What is more, "By most measures, the gap between rich and poor has been growing. The difference in per capita income between the world's wealthiest 20 percent and the poorest 20 per cent was 30 to 1 in 1960; this ratio jumped to 74 to 1 in 1999." In poor countries, "Women are disproportionately represented among the poor. Some of the poorest women are in women-headed households. An increasing number are widows. Reducing the 'gender gap' in health and education reduces individual poverty and encourages economic growth. The effects are strongest in the poorer countries."

As for disease:

AIDS is the major cause of death in Africa, where 28 million people live with HIV/AIDS: all but 1.5 million of the 40 million currently infected people live in developing countries. It is spreading fastest in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and is daily becoming a more serious threat in India and China. HIV/AIDS is a demographic, social and economic disaster. As it kills predominantly younger adults, the worst affected countries are seeing a hollowing out of an entire generation in the productive age group. Public servants and private sector employees are falling sick in increasing numbers. By 2020 economies could be 20--40 per cent smaller than expected because of the pandemic. Health services have already moved out of the reach of many of the poorest. Education and health systems are both collapsing as teachers and health workers die. The pandemic shows no sign of slowing. Effective leadership has held back infection in countries such as Senegal, Thailand and Uganda, but many leaders at all levels have not yet confronted the pandemic. Despite many statements of support, members of the international community have not yet provided the resources poor countries reed.

The report treats these issues diplomatically as general ones, but today's story of underdevelopment is specifically about Africa. It is a simplification to say that the world is moving forward and that Africa is left behind, but there is some truth in that statement. The question of why needless misery continues in Africa is painful to confront. It is obvious to everyone that Africa needs help. Peoples and rich cultures are in danger. We could save them at very little cost to ourselves. American and European leaders have in recent years made bold declarations that it is now Africa's turn for their concern and attention. Why do they not follow up?

On development policy, the report repeats what has now become the established gospel: health care, education and improved opportunities for women. Development comes from the bottom up, beginning with people and with investments in people. Behind that lies the question of why poverty persists in a world that is boundlessly rich. For many reasons, obviously, but not for some of those often considered the most obvious. It is not that external conditions, say "exploitation," have condemned poor people in poor countries to continued poverty. The numbers in poverty have gone down in Latin America, the Arab world and Asia, sharply down in South Asia. That could not have happened if countries were stuck in international structures outside their control. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the number of people in extreme poverty has risen dramatically after 1989 (from 1 to 17 million). That is a legacy of internal failures. In Africa (sub-Sahara) poverty continues to rise. That is because of appallingly bad government. (There is good government in Africa, and there conditions are improving.)

Nor is it [poverty] because of overpopulation. Economists have disagreed about the link between population and poverty, but the Population Fund now says the matter is settled. The link is in the escape from poverty more than in its creation.

A high proportion of young dependents in a poor population holds back economic growth and makes it difficult for the country to lift itself into development. But if birth rates can be pulled down, there is an opportunity to kick-start economic growth, provided there is governance which can make use of the opportunity.

Within a generation this downturn in fertility opens a demographic window, a period in which a large group of working-age people is supporting relatively fewer older and younger dependants. The demographic window is a unique opportunity for countries to invest in economic growth. The window opens only once and not for long. Within another generation it closes again, as populations age and dependency increases once more. Taking advantage of the demographic window

has accounted for a third of the annual economic growth of the East Asian 'tigers'. Others have been less successful. The poorest countries are a long way from opening the demographic window.

The UN Population Fund has published State

of World Population reports annually since 1978. It is one of a handful of UN annual reports which are outstanding exercises in political education, the other flagships being the Human Development Reports (United Nations Development Program) and the World Development Reports (World Bank).

The 2002 report stimulates reflections about

too much population growth in underdeveloped

economies, and not enough in developed economies. What can be done? We cannot read this report on underdevelopment, or other recent UN reports, without insisting again that something be done for Africa. I deliberately say for Africa. However much it smacks of superiority, Africa needs us to act for it. It's the legacy of shame for the harm Europe has done to Africa that stands in the way of doing good now. Engagement with Africa will be controversial, it will be about ensuring good government first and more money second. European leaders are fearful of the effort and of being accused of bullying. African robbers parading as governments use the rhetoric of post-colonialism to protect their plundered turf. Posturing and megaphone diplomacy, as in the stand-off with Zimbabwe, are no good. The lesson to be learnt from the tragedy of that country and from other horrors of starvation and disease is that change takes more than development aid. There is a need for institutions of engagement in order to get ahead of disaster. We should, in Europe, be able to see this as a responsibility; we have no business letting old shame put us to shame again.

In Europe it is not inconceivable, indeed it is now probable, that population decline will lead on to economic decline. Beyond the social changes, it seems prudent to assume that further decline could follow tomorrow unless we take action today. Although birth rates are indisputably too low in Europe as a whole, they are above crisis level in some European countries. What is reality in some countries must be a possibility in others. Europe could nudge up birth rates. Small changes would add up to large effects in population trends. First, we need to recognize that European economies and cultures are in the balance. That is a difficult matter of acknowledging the fact of population decline, and then of turning that acknowledgment into a European assertiveness, which argues for the importance of preserving Europe, its culture and values. Then we need a family-oriented revolution in the welfare state. We must make it affordable for young people to start families.

We must give families more economic support and make it possible for women to be wives, mothers and workers at the same time. This will include both back-to-the-family measures, such as extended paid maternity leave and job security for mothers, and collective measures such as crèches and day-care centres.

Finally, we must sort ourselves out on immigration. While it may not be the answer to

Europe's population problem, Europeans need to embrace the fact that the world's people are on the move. The future belongs to dynamic mixed-population societies. Europe is allowing itself to grow old in structures and mindsets. It would make matters worse if we were to shut ourselves off from the vibrant community of transnationalism. That is a matter of opening up borders, of course, but that we can only do if we beam to want to change and escape from our fear of what is young in today's world.

From The Times Literary Supplement

Feb. 28, 2003