Policy-based Population Projections for the European Union: A Complementary Approach

Abstract

We present new population projections out to 2100 for the countries of the European Union and for the EU as a whole under a wide range of fertility and migration scenarios. As policy-based projections rather than forecasts, they aspire not to maximize predictive success regarding future demographic developments, but to accurately show the impact of different migration and socio-economic policy choices on population numbers. Our chief aim is to clarify those policy choices for European citizens and policymakers. We show that demographic policies have the potential to markedly increase or decrease future populations across the EU. Migration policy offers greater scope for influencing future population numbers than policies aimed at influencing national fertility rates. In countries with particularly low fertility rates or high emigration levels, egalitarian economic and family support policies have the potential to limit future population decreases to a significant extent, especially in combination. In most cases, EU nations are well placed to stabilize or slowly reduce their populations by continuing status quo policies or with moderate changes. Thus they are well placed to achieve one of the necessary conditions for creating ecologically sustainable societies.

potential environmental impacts of EU immigration policy: future population numbers, greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity preservation

“…In an effort to understand the potential impact of immigration, family support and economic safety net policies on future population numbers, the authors and colleagues recently developed new policy-based EU population projections out to 2100 (Cafaro and Dérer, 2019). The sheer range of immigration policies advocated by European political parties is impressive and we sought to capture this range in our projections.…”

“…This last scenario represents a rough proxy for an "open borders" policy, which is difficult to model. These broad migration scenarios capture the range of policy choices advocated across the EU today, from drastically curtailing immigration to greatly expanding it, with the three middle alternatives (½ to 2X the status quo) covering the most likely range of alternatives (see Cafaro and Dérer, 2019, for methodological details). For a full range of population projections for all EU nations and the EU as a whole, please see the website of The Overpopulation Project.…”

“…Source: Cafaro and Dérer, 2019. How might immigration influence future EU population numbers? Continuing the status quo of about 1.2 million annual net positive migration (along with status quo family support policies and economic safety net policies, which influence fertility rates) would lead to a 10% population decrease, or 52.6 million fewer people in 2100.…”

“…Clearly, immigration policy changes have the potential to increase or decrease the EU population by hundreds of millions of people by 2100 (Lutz et al, 2019;Cafaro and Dérer, 2019). A key take-away is that relatively small annual changes have the potential to cumulate into large overall changes in the not-too-distant future.…”

“…Source: Cafaro and Dérer, 2019. For example, annual net migration levels into Germany have averaged a little less than 260,000 over the past twenty years. Continuing at this level for the rest of the century would lead to a stable German population, according to our calculations, while increasing or decreasing annual immigration levels would lead to populations that were tens of millions higher or lower.…”