Europe's demographic changes
Europe’s population is due to decline from 2025 onwards, although the ageing of our societies has already begun.
The remarkable growth of life expectancy - a spectacular achievement for our societies - has been accompanied more recently by a decline in the birth rate across the European Union to below replacement levels. Although immigration has mitigated these effects in recent years, by 2025 it will no longer be sufficient to offset population fall.
Under current policies, the implications of such a decline and ageing will be considerable for the sustainability of our social and economic models.
PES Party Leaders and Prime Ministers meeting in November 2004, hosted by Prime Minister José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain, agreed that European social democrats needed to formulate appropriate responses from a social democratic perspective to the demographic changes facing Europe.
The independent Reflection Group on Meeting Europe’s Demographic Challenges in the twenty-first century, chaired by Ylva Johansson, Swedish Minister of Health and Elderly Care, was established to examine these changes and submit independent recommendations to PES Party Leaders and Prime Ministers. The present report is the outcome of the Reflection Group’s deliberations.
The Reflection Group’s report presents a life course perspective, analysing how policies relating to each stage of the life course can improve our ability to tackle the consequences of demographic change.
At every stage of the life course, the Reflection Group considers that a major impact could be achieved through a new social democratic approach and new public policies, using the welfare state actively to anticipate change and turn it to advantage.
Maximising children’s life chances from early age is a primary concern in order to avoid generational cycles of childhood to old age poverty. Recommendations focused on improving public investments in children from birth onwards, through the provision of universal access to child care for under 3 year olds, pre-schooling for 3 to 6 year olds and before and after school care for school age children.
In the context of a diminishing labour supply, it appears imperative to optimise the capacities of the existing workforce and to counter the decline in birth rates through new efforts to combine work with family responsibilities. The Reflection Group presents recommendations on how to stimulate the lifelong development of competences and invest in Europe’s human resources – from the young to the old.
Women are one of the keys to averting the most negative consequences of demographic trends, both through their participation in the labour market and also their ability to reverse the decline in birth rates if more favourable conditions are put in place for child bearing and child raising. Recommendations made in this area include the phasing out of family rights in favour of individual fiscal and social security rights.
Moving on to another important factor with a direct impact on the workforce, the Reflection Group considers that although immigration is not the solution to the EU’s projected population fall, the EU does have a dual need for high and low skilled immigration for its own economic dynamism. In order to balance the needs of the European Union and developing countries, the Group recommends, inter alia, flexible leave and return policies and improved integration policies.
Clearly, the most visible feature of demographic change in the near future will be the ageing of our population. A fundamental change of attitude will be needed, if we are to address the wants and needs of the growing number of over-55s. From adapting the labour market and improving the quality and flexibility of work for over-55s to introducing appropriate pensions reform, preventive health throughout the life course and active citizenship, a positive conception of active ageing should become the key to a new social democratic outlook.
The Reflection Group offers a positive vision of demographic change as an important opportunity for European social democracy, through the renewal of the vision, public policies and practices of social democratic parties.
