DEMOGRAPHY.

All the components of population growth—mortality, fertility, and migration—underwent fundamental changes in Europe during the twentieth century. The century represents a transition toward a completely new demographic regime and a break with the past. The steep decline of mortality, interrupted only by military conflicts, was the result of an epidemiologic revolution. The fertility transition led to the advent of a new reproductive regime characterized by small families; further declines by the beginning of the twenty-first century even threatened to lead to a regression of population size, while the resulting aging was expected to place an unbearable burden on social support systems. Net migration, finally, which had long been negative for Europe, became positive during the second half of the twentieth century.

MORTALITY

The secular decline of mortality had started to pick up speed before 1914 after the discovery of the germ theory of disease and the resulting improvements in public and private sanitation. It was interrupted by World War I, which caused over ten million European deaths, and by the influenza epidemic of 1918, which may have caused two million European deaths. (As in the case of other estimates of mortality in times of war and catastrophe, the figures have large margins of error because the systems of data collection typically break down as a result of crises.) There were other high mortalities before World War II but more restricted in scope: the civil war in Russia from 1918 to 1920, the famines of 1921 and 1933 in parts of Russia and Ukraine (2.6 million people may have died from the 1933 famine in Ukraine alone), or the Spanish civil war (over 300,000 deaths). The toll of World War II for Europe may be estimated at more than forty million, but this would include civilian deaths and the victims of genocide, including approximately six million Jews and 250,000 Gypsies. The total number of war deaths (civilians and military, including prisoners of war) may have reached twenty six million for the USSR (including those of Asian origin), between 4.6 and 6 million for Germany, 5.8 million for Poland (15 percent of the population), and 1.5 million for Yugoslavia. England lost 300,000, France 600,000, and Italy 450,000 people. Several smaller countries of eastern Europe (Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Greece) each lost more than 400,000 people, comparatively a very large toll. The second half of the century, however, was relatively free of wars with European participation, with the exception of the civil wars attending the breakup of Yugoslavia during the 1990s, which may have caused 200,000 deaths.

In 1910 the average expectation of life at birth for Europe (excluding Russia) amounted to forty-eight years for both sexes together, with highs at fifty-seven in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway and lows close to forty in eastern Europe. (Tables 1 and 2 show expectation of life at birth for both sexes in a selection of countries during the twentieth century.) Infant mortality was below one hundred deaths under age one per thousand births in the three Scandinavian countries by the beginning of the century but was still at least twice as high in Germany, Austria, and most of eastern and southern

Europe. Wars did not interrupt and may even have stimulated medical innovation, and the general trend of expectation of life was steadily upward, except for the countries of eastern Europe where it stagnated or even receded after 1960. The century witnessed a revolution in the mortality regime, which has received the name of epidemiologic transition. The expression refers to a movement from a situation dominated by infectious diseases to one where people die mostly from chronic and degenerative conditions. In the 1910s childhood diseases and gastrointestinal and respiratory infections were the most lethal, and tuberculosis was the most important single cause of death that affected young adults as well as persons of other ages; in 2000 mortality was largely cardiovascular in nature (strokes and heart conditions) or the result of cancers. The changes resulted from a variety of factors, and the exact causal relation is hard to pin down. Medical progress certainly played an important role, particularly the development of vaccines that could be administered routinely to small children. Mortality from several infectious diseases, however, was strongly reduced before effective medication had been discovered; thus measles came down before the introduction of an effective vaccine and tuberculosis before the use of streptomycin for its treatment. Public health and sanitation improved and contributed to erasing the prevailing excess mortality of the cities over the countryside. Health education familiarized the public with simple hygienic measures, while increases in the standard of living improved living conditions and nutrition. A great medical breakthrough occurred with the development of antibacterial drugs from the late 1930s onward. The decline was remarkably similar in all countries throughout most of the century, although trends started to diverge in eastern Europe during the last quarter of the period.

By the 1960s there had been a great deal of convergence of mortality levels among European countries. It appeared that the great mortality transition was over and that the era of infectious diseases was over. Infant mortality had decreased from levels around one hundred deaths of children under age one per thousand births at the eve of the Great War to levels around twenty per thousand in the 1960s. The decline would continue in northwestern Europe, to average levels close to five deaths per thousand births by the year 2000, with extreme values of three in Iceland and six in Ireland. In eastern Europe, however, infant mortality remained at higher levels, in excess of fifteen per thousand in Romania and Russia. On the whole, however, infant and child mortality had reached such low levels by the 1960s that further improvement had only a moderate impact on the expectation of life.

If the increase in the duration of life before 1960 was principally the result of declines of mortality before age fifty, after 1960 it became increasingly the result of the improved survival at older ages. New causes of deaths became prominent that were linked to behavior and particularly deadly among young adults, such as tobacco smoking and automobile accidents, and late in the century HIV/AIDS. Contrary to predictions, however, expectation of life at older ages continued to increase steadily in most countries, without appreciable slowdown. By the end of the century the expectation of life at birth exceeded seventy-five years for men and eighty years for women in the countries of northwest and southern Europe, but it was lagging behind by around ten years for men and seven years for women in most countries of eastern Europe. Russia, with an expectation of life at birth of fifty-nine years for men and seventy-two years for women, had slid back to the lowest levels in Europe and below its own level in 1960.

The extension of life for the older population was the dominant factor of change in the mortality regime during the second half of the twentieth century. It was characterized by a reduction of chronic degenerative diseases, particularly of cardiovascular conditions. It is unclear to what extent this development was the result of changes in lifestyle, of the prevention of self-inflicted conditions such as alcoholism, smoking, and accidents, of the better tracking and management of chronic diseases, of new medications or surgical procedures, or of the long-term effect on the organism of reduction of childhood diseases that occurred many years earlier. Interestingly, Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, and France, which were among the relatively high-mortality countries of Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century) had among the highest expectations of life in Europe in the early twenty-first century despite relatively high tobacco consumption. This resulted mainly from a relatively low prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and is probably related to lifestyle and diet rather than to the effectiveness of the public health system. On the other hand, the former communist countries of eastern Europe, which benefited to the full from the reduction of infectious diseases before 1960, were unable to adapt to the changes in behavior that would curb man-made diseases and improve the personal management of health and did not benefit from the decline of cardiovascular diseases that took place in the rest of Europe.

FERTILITY

The secular decline of mortality had a considerable positive impact on the growth rate of Europe and compensated for the simultaneous decline of fertility. On the eve of the First World War, practically all European countries (with the exception of Ireland and Albania) had become engaged in what is known as the fertility transition. The latter term refers to the widespread adoption of methods of family limitation by couples in the population at large, which resulted in the progressive control of marital fertility. The methods were still crude (mostly withdrawal) and relatively ineffective, but the motivations were powerful. For selected countries through the century, table 3 shows total fertility, that is, the number of children a woman would have by the end of childbearing if she were exposed to the fertility of the specific period.

There were many reasons for the changes in the pattern of reproduction. They certainly included the decline of mortality, which made it possible for couples to attain the same final family size, and for populations to maintain their size and growth, with fewer births. A concern for the health of mothers and children and for the economic prosperity of couples helped shift the emphasis from the quantity of children to their quality. Confronted with the fertility decline in a context of military conflict and labor force needs, some nations of Europe attempted to reverse the trend by legislating access to contraceptive information (as in a law passed by the French assembly in 1920) or by promulgating policies in favor of the family (most notably in Sweden).

The Great Depression provided additional economic reasons to postpone births or avoid them altogether. During the early 1930s, total fertility would reach levels below two children per woman for England and Wales, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. The decline continued until 1935 for many countries and past that date for some, particularly in eastern Europe, but a recovery had started here and there by the late 1930s. In all countries, the generations of women born between 1920 and 1945 had in excess of two births on average. The Second World War concealed the long-term tendency for a time, but it became clear after the war that the long decline of fertility was over and that a resurgence of childbearing was taking place. This was widely characterized as the "baby boom." At first the rise was interpreted as the making up of births postponed during the depression and the war, but the reversal of the trend toward decline persisted during the 1960s, resulting in total fertility rates in excess of 2.5 children per woman for the decade in northwestern, central, and southern Europe. The phenomenon was explained in part by a marriage boom, characterized by more people marrying and doing so at a younger age. For example in the Netherlands, the mean age at first marriage of women declined from twenty-six years in 1948 to less than twenty-three years in 1975. Even in Ireland, a country with a high marriage age and a high proportion of people never marrying, the behavior of couples reflected the new popularity of marriage as on the Continent. It appeared, then, that the European countries had reestablished a demographic equilibrium between the birthrate and the death rate that would result in moderate growth or constant population size in the long run. The impression was deceptive, though, as a large proportion of the births were unwanted, with children born to very young couples who hardly could afford them and had no access to effective contraceptive methods—even though the resort to illegally induced abortions was increasing.

Toward the mid-1960s many laws regulating the diffusion of contraception were relaxed. Later, starting in the 1970s, abortion was progressively legalized in most European countries. Increasingly the states of noncommunist Europe adopted a laissez-faire policy in matters of reproduction. Military might, a primary consideration in 1914, ceased to be a determinant of public policy. The excesses of populationism and eugenism during the interwar years (ranging from the prevention of contraceptive access to forced sterilization of less desirable members of the population including ethnic minorities in Nazi Germany) inspired great caution on the part of governments with regard to interference with reproductive freedom. The generalization of family allowances occurred on social rather than demographic grounds.

Reproduction in eastern Europe followed a distinctly different course from the rest of the Continent. Traditionally, contrasted marriage patterns had prevailed on both sides of a line running from the Adriatic to the Baltic Sea. Marriage was earlier and more universal in eastern Europe, and this resulted in a pattern of early family formation. The secular decline of fertility had started later and

continued into the 1980s; there was little evidence of a baby boom. As a result of national policies, access to contraception remained more limited than in western Europe and abortion became a common technique of birth control, while generous regimes of family allowances and marriage support encouraged medium-size to large families. Several countries attempted to raise their fertility by restricting access to abortion where it had become the main technique of birth control. In Romania, a change in the law in 1967 resulted in a spectacular but momentary peak in fertility, followed by a long decline at higher levels than in most countries of the region.

Contrary to most forecasts, the decline of fertility resumed in the noncommunist European countries after 1964 and eventually led to levels that could not ensure replacement in the long term. At prevailing mortality levels it would take an average of 2.1 children per woman to ensure the replacement of a generation. By the early 1980s only Ireland, Greece, and Portugal, plus all the countries of communist eastern Europe except East Germany, had total fertility rates above two. In West Germany, the rate dropped below 1.3 in 1985; Spain (1.6) and Italy (1.4) were not far behind. Among younger cohorts of women, child-lessness was rising rapidly. Eastern Europe engaged in a new demographic regime of very low fertility after the collapse of the communist regimes. The eastern part of Germany that used to be the Democratic German Republic even attained the record low total fertility level of 0.84 children per woman in 1995 but recovered slightly thereafter.

The changes were aided by innovations in birth control technology. Hormonal contraception diffused from the mid-1960s on, at the same time as intrauterine devices. These methods were especially adapted to the prevention of births early in the reproductive lives of women. As a backup in case of contraceptive failure, safe techniques were developed to induce abortion. Northern, western, and central Europe adopted a change in reproductive behavior that has received the name of second demographic transition. It was characterized by new approaches to marriage and celibacy, leading to below-reproduction levels of fertility. The normative sequence in Europe had long followed a well-established pattern: courtship, wedding, sexual relations, one or two children following promptly upon marriage, and the avoidance or postponement of subsequent births. Extramarital births were frowned upon, and an ideal of monogamy and conjugal fidelity was promoted, if not always conformed to. Scandinavian countries, where cohabitation was more common that elsewhere in Europe, led the way in adopting new patterns of nuptiality. These were characterized by the postponement of a formal wedding while the couple was already cohabiting and possibly having children, or even by the complete forsaking of any marriage ceremony. On the one hand, the age at marriage went up (in the Netherlands, for example, from 22.6 years in 1975 to 27.5 in 1995 for women, and the increase was very similar in France). On the other hand, an increasing proportion of couples lived together without being married. In 2000 the proportions of extramarital birth reached 56 percent in Sweden and exceeded 40 percent in Denmark, France, and Norway. Increasingly the laws of European countries have granted recognition of equal rights to children born outside of marriage and accepted new forms of legal unions, as for example the civil solidarity pacts in France that provide rights to nonmarried, stable partners. Even in the countries of southern Europe, where the traditional forms of marriage continue to prevail, and in eastern Europe, the age at marriage has been going up, and the birth of children occurs typically at an older age of the parents. Meanwhile the number of divorces has increased, and cohabitations are less stable than formal marriages.

There has been much speculation on the reasons behind the second demographic transition and the collapse of fertility levels. Inferred psychological causes have included the growth of individualism and the decline in importance of the family as a provider of services and resources in welfare states. Concerns for sustainable growth, the preservation of the environment, quality of life, and the rights of women have become important shapers of policy. The main factor, however, appears to have been rising female schooling and labor force participation. During the second part of the twentieth century the male breadwinner system of the past increasingly yielded to the two-earner family. Those countries that have attempted to reduce the conflict for women between working outside the home and having children, for example by providing free childcare facilities or other benefits, appear to have been better able to sustain their fertility levels than those where the assistance to working mothers has lagged behind.

The effect of low fertility on population growth has more than compensated the effect of the decline of mortality. However, its impact has been concealed to some extent by the increase in the flow of migrants to Europe after the Second World War.

MIGRATION

The large streams of European migration that contributed to the settlement of America, as well as Australia and New Zealand, essentially dried up during the First World War and were greatly reduced between the wars, particularly when the Great Depression eliminated the overseas demand for foreign labor. Intracontinental migration and refugee movements were considerable, however, as a result of the world wars, of the boundary changes imposed at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, and of the civil wars and ethnic conflicts of the period. The Russian Revolution and the expulsion of minorities in eastern and central Europe may have resulted in the forced displacement of 10 million persons after the First World War; the conflict between Greece and Turkey resulted in the resettlement of 1.5 million ethnic Greeks, and the Spanish civil war led to the departure of a half-million refugees. The Second World War gave rise to even larger population movements. As many as 30 million people were forced to move between 1939 and 1948, including some 10 million ethnic Germans expelled from eastern Europe. The creation of a political division between the Western world and the communist countries resulted in substantial flows of refugees, particularly between East and West Germany before and even after the establishment of the Berlin Wall in 1961 (for a net movement of 4.1 million persons), and in 1956–1957, 1968, and 1980–1981 on the occasions of the uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and the imposition of martial law in Poland. In excess of 320,000 Russian Jews migrated to Israel and the United States between 1970 and 1989. In the early 1990s close to 5 million people fled from the various countries that had made up Yugoslavia; most of the moves were temporary, however.

Germany adopted a right of return for people of German origin living abroad and does not consider them as migrants. In addition to postwar refugees, before the disappearance of the Iron Curtain, West Germany negotiated the repatriation of close to three million ethnic Germans from Russia and Poland; others came from Austria, the

Balkans, and other parts of the world. Between 1945 and 1992 the Federal Republic of Germany integrated about twenty-four million foreign-born persons. By providing labor, the influx contributed to the success of German industry in the postwar era and sustained population growth at a time when fertility had become very low. Italy and Spain also freely readmitted individuals of national origin, particularly from Latin America.

The dissolution of colonial empires (Dutch, British, French, and Belgian) resulted in the return migration of European settlers as well as in a flow of migrants from former territories to the former mother countries or to other parts of Europe. England had a policy of free access from countries of the Commonwealth until 1971. With the economic boom of the 1960s and 1970s, a demand for labor resulted in the hiring of "guest workers" from Yugoslavia, Turkey, and North Africa, who progressively replaced migrants from European countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Ireland. These countries had themselves become countries of immigration, or return migration, by the end of the century. Whereas the labor movements from countries outside of the European Union consisted at first of men alone, in a second stage their impact was multiplied by family reunification.

Migration streams have doubly contributed to European population growth: first by the migrants themselves, second by their higher-than-average fertility. By 2000 there were 18.5 million foreigners recorded, or about 7 percent of the population of the European Union. The assimilation of some ethnic minorities has proven difficult, and at the turn of the century, with the growth of unemployment in the European Union and a shift of public opinion against migration, increasing legal restrictions have been placed on new arrivals. Undocumented entries and refugee movements have continued, however, and at the turn of the century the number of undocumented aliens in the European Union was estimated in excess of 3 million. Meanwhile immigration from eastern Europe has become more important. Poland in particular has become a major supplier of skilled, temporary labor to western Europe.

POPULATION GROWTH AND AGING

European population growth was sustained throughout the twentieth century, as shown in table 4. As a whole, the population of Europe grew from 422 million in 1900 to 548 million in 1950 and 727 million in 2000. Growth was moderate in contrast with that of most other parts of the world, so that the share of Europe in the world population totals was cut in half, from 24 percent at the beginning of the century to 12 percent in 2000. The geopolitical advantages of large populations are uncertain, however. The Continent is densely populated as it is, and it has accommodated its population while preserving its environment and its living patterns. No European city features among the twelve largest in the world, and the proportion of the urban population residing in moderate-size cities, or less than 500,000, has remained stable at slightly above 60 percent. In itself, the relaxation of population pressure would cause little concern to the nations of Europe were it not for the impact of the decline of fertility on the age distribution of the population.

Despite fertility below replacement for a number of years, the large number of young women in the population (resulting from the higher fertility at midcentury) resulted in a continued excess of births over deaths. This effect of a favorable age distribution has been termed population momentum. The situation has now been reversed in many countries, and only immigration prevents the shrinking of their populations. In the year 2002, deaths exceeded births in the all the countries of the former USSR and of eastern Europe, as well as in Germany, Greece, and Italy, while positive population growth still prevailed in the former three countries; eastern Europe was losing, rather than attracting, migrants. Both negative natural increase and absolute decline of population are likely to become more common in the twenty-first century, as the reproductive age groups are thinned down by the low fertility of the last quarter of the twentieth century. In 2000 the number of European women between ages twenty and forty largely exceeded the female population under age twenty, thus presaging a sharp reduction in the future number of births.

No country is willing to face the large absolute decline of its population that would result from present levels of the birthrate, or, alternatively, the cultural and political consequence of the level of migration from countries outside Europe that would be necessary to prevent the collapse of population numbers. For example, with a continuation of present fertility and migration levels, the population of Italy would decline from fifty-eight million in 2000 to forty-six million by 2050 and twenty-nine million in 2100. Moreover, the percentage of the population above age sixty-five would become close to 40 percent (from its 2006 level of 18 percent). The level of migration necessary to halt the decline would be so high that it would progressively replace the population of Italian stock.

The effect of low fertility on population aging is of major concern to the governments of Europe. The proportion of the population over age sixty-five in 2000 was 14.7 percent for Europe as a whole, compared with 8.2 percent in 1950 and a projected 23 percent in 2030. As the baby boom cohorts are reaching the age of retirement, the proportion of old-age dependents relying on pension schemes is bound to increase rapidly. These schemes, however, are usually based on the "payas-you-go" principle, meaning that a contribution levied on the working population supports the retirement of the older population. As the ratio of the retired to those in the labor force increases, this becomes a source of financial problems for the sponsoring states. This is compounded by the fact that the proportion of the oldest old (age eighty-five and above) is increasing too, thus increasing the cost of state-supported medical insurance schemes.

Thus, in the early years of the twenty-first century it is increasingly obvious to governments and public opinion that the low fertility of European countries is not sustainable in the long run. What should be done to restore fertility levels that will ensure the reproduction of the population is not obvious. Various measures have been suggested, ranging from more generous family allowances to privileges accorded parents on the labor market and special family voting rights. Nations are turning to the example of Scandinavian and French family policies aiming to enhance the compatibility of motherhood and family life with labor force participation. For example, the German parliament passed laws entitling all children age three and older to a place in a kindergarten. The effect of such measures, however, will at best only be perceptible with time; at best, they would only alleviate the consequences of aging in the long run.

See alsoAbortion; Decolonization; Divorce; Immigration and Internal Migration; Sexuality.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bardet, Jean-Pierre, and Jacques Dupâquier, eds. Histoire des populations de l'Europe. Vol. 3: Les temps incertains, 1914–1998. Paris, 1999. Extensive discussion by European specialists, with chapters on the components of demographic change and on individual countries.

Demeny, Paul. "Population Policy Dilemmas in Europe at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century." Population and Development Review 29, no. 2 (2003): 1–28.

Fassman, Heinz, and Rainer Münz, eds. European Migration in the Late Twentieth Century: Historical Patterns, Actual Trends, and Social Implications. Laxenburg, Austria, 1994.

Meslé, France, and Jacques Vallin. "Mortality in Europe: The Divergence between East and West." Population-E 57, no. 2 (2002): 157–198.

Sardon, Jean-Paul. "Recent Demographic Trends in the Developed Countries." Population-E 57, no. 2 (2002): 111–156; Population-E 59, no. 2 (2004): 263–314.

United Nations. Policy Responses to Population Decline and Ageing. Special issue of Population Bulletin of the United Nations, nos. 44–45. New York, 2002.

Etienne van de Walle