Reversing Europe's Demographic Collapse
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- Опубликовано: 30 сен 2024
- Median age across Europe continues to rise, while for most overseas migration is from countries outside of Europe such as the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.
In the Baltic region specifically this ageing population comes on top of decades of emigration and population decline.
Can this situation be properly reversed? The Ukraine war has caused a huge surge in population as refugees are taken in by Poland, the Baltic, Czechs and other European countries. What effect has this had? and what lessons does this teach policy makers?
Moving population from one country to another is not "reversing demographic collapse" - it's just donating population to one country (which is a questionable practice in itself) at expense of another country (which would suffer even worse demographic collapse).
I am Gally that there are people talking about this.
Good point. There are lots of Ukrainian businesses in Lithuania already. Of course there are serious issues with the language barrier. Ukrainian English skills are pretty low in general so the only language you can communicate with them, especially the older generation of 30+ is Russian. This creates serious problems with younger Lithuanian population who don't speak Russian at all. Also, older generation does not see any need to learn Lithuanian as all older people speak fluent Russian. Integration is not so easy.
One other thought I have, we shouldn't parasite on Ukraine. After the war they will need their people to rebuild the country. Perhaps building friendly business ties is the more proper approach.
I'll start with correction. Schengen vs Shenzhen mix up was... weird.
It will be very hard to retain refugees. Most of the people who were looking for better opportunities, chose Western, more rich countries.
The expectations for future Ukraine is similar what happened to west Germany with Marshall's plan. Ukraine is poised to be a land of huge opportunities with rebuilding.
I would actually think that Ukraine will attract a lot of lithuanians and they will choose to work in Ukraine. With a goodwill we have learned, Ukraine will have Lithuania in short list of countries participating in rebuilding.
So actually we will have to worry more about keeping the remaining population from migrating to Ukraine. If a lot of young man will go work there, with casualties suffered by Ukraine will be less available local man (and a lot of them damaged quite badly), some of them could chose to marry and stay.
So unfortunately, i think LT will get shorter end of the stick once again.
85% women's and childrens? Would they put any positive out put to the host country economy? Most of them would properly not be skilled in laboring?
Interesting points, but as Latvian, I think we should be careful. We already have large Slavic origin populations, with all bad things it entails. I think we should focus on healthcare, education, automatization and robotization, and adaptation of economy and infrastructure to smaller population.
It won’t help Lithuania in anything other than a number but my husband should have his Lithuanian citizenship restored this year however he is 61 this year so that’s not going to help the demographics either 🤔 He is an electronics engineer born in Australia to both a Lithuanian born father and Lithuanian born mother so brain drain caused by WW2.
Europe really needs non-EU migration. Otherwise taking migration from places like Ukraine is just stealing from peter to give to tom. It's not solving the issue just intensifying the issue in one part of europe for partial relief in another. If people are concerned about high migration from the middle east then the migration sources should be diversified. More from India, Africa(like Nigeria), Latin America(like brazil), and East Asia(like Vietnam). I can't see any mathematical way we can sort this without non-EU migration in quite large numbers.
When it comes the demographic crises we can choose our prejudice or our prosperity, we really can't have both
Speaking about refugee policy of Latvia. Actually in past, in 20 century, Latvia was open for refugees, we accepted many fleeing Soviet Union and from neighboring countries, when war started. Also we accepted refugees in our recent past, when migrant crisis was raging in EU, we just put more attention of making distinction who was true refugees and who was simply puting - a illegal migrant. And we are also accepting Ukrainian refugees. We aren't xenophobic. Actually Latvia is one of the most diverse countries of Europe. Of course various integration programs are in place, learning Latvian is one of them. One need to know Latvian, if one wants to stay in Latvia. Some Russians now are learning this a hard way, facing even deportations. Of course there are underlying feeling in society, that there are to many Russians and other Slavic ethnicities in country, ethnicities with whom we have little in common.
Actually I don't see aging population and people leaving a country as a problem. It's good that people can freely move and travel.
Sorry man, but the demographic transition is irreversible. This is true for basically the entire world.
Demographic shift is reversible, but it will inevitable result in more religious and more conservative society. Just look at USA, while fertility rate of US population was around 2 from 90's to 2010 and recently only dropped to 1.6 (perhaps result of pandemic and so on), fertility among Amish is between 6 and 8. And it is perhaps like that for other more orthodox denominations, so at one point trend will reverse and dwindling secular societies will became growing religious one. Well it perhaps will occur before religious groups will gain majority in given societies as at certain point they will be able to pass certain laws that part of non-religious, but bit more conservative part of society will agree with as well.
As far as I know, roughly 30% of Ukrainians are planning to remain in Czechia after end of war, but I expect that the number will slowly rise, especially for families and women with children as those children will make friends in school and create bonds to Czechia that could be in the end stronger than those to Ukraine. But that will depend on duration of the war and place of origin of those refugees. Certainly people from western Ukraine will have less reasons to stay there than people from Eastern Ukraine, but people from Carpathian Ruthenia, on the other hand, could have more reasons to move to Czechia as it was part of Czechoslovakia during interwar period and AFAIK people there view it as their best period in recent history. I have heard that during break-up of USSR they wanted to be again part of Czechoslovakia, but process of our own "divorce" was underway so they had remained part of Ukraine. Becoming part of Slovakia perhaps was not that interesting, being separated part of Czechia, that was not in best shape economically as well, would be problematic and not feasible. But that region is still, at lest by some Czechs, considered somehow "ours" or at least not proper part of "wild east", that many would consider Ukraine.
Your Ideas are interesting, but, at leas in case of Czechia, we first need to quickly fix two main problems, real estate market and pensions, as those are in such bad state that it discourage young people not only from starting families, let alone larger one, but from living here. Price of real estate is pure speculation (at least 50 % more than real value is) and price of goods is higher than in Austria, Germany and Poland. And as those rose quickly and basically without any reason, i suspect that those are subject of some speculation as well. Unless this is fixed quickly, young people will rather settle in border regions of Poland, Austria and Germany even if they perhaps for some time would retain their jobs in Czechia. Such situation is already happening in Czech Silesia. Only after this is fixed we could think about some large scale resettlement schemes for Ukrainians or about some way how to attract people that had migrated outside back to Czechia. Significant problem is that pro-Russian populists are already spreading their propaganda how this is fault of Ukrainians even thou, that the situation began to worsen well before pandemic and is only getting worse.
Can we do a collaboration?
War on doorstep, how can you bring children into this world.... ?
Good point and sad to have a war near or far of any country
Because that's how humans exist since the beginning