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The article focuses on population or demographic changes in Europe. The author says that low reproduction rates, longer lifespans, and mass immigration will challenge public health programs, pensions and social services. Many European countries have a reproduction rate below the estimated replacement level but those with higher fertility rates are countries that accept and support births outside of marriage.

The article argues that refugees are not the solution to the demographic problem in Europe. Topics discussed include the declining population in Germany as the reason why Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed refugees into the country and the percentage of asylum applicants in the European Union (EU) who are younger than 35 in 2015.

The article discusses how ageing populations will hurt Europe's economies and put pressure on budgets. Europe is ageing much faster than the United States. This year's expansion of the European Union increases its population. By 2050, the United States will have almost caught up: if forecasts prove correct, there will be 420m Americans, compared with 430m Europeans. The main reason is that European women have fewer children. It is low fertility that explains why Europe's population is ageing faster than America's. Europe's rapid ageing will inflict economic pain. Even as numbers of workers fall, the numbers dependent on them will rise. This soaring elderly dependency ratio will test European budgets to the limit. Looming ahead is a big rise in spending not only on pensions but also on health and long-term care. The demographic challenge facing Europe may be even greater than most projections suggest. Population ageing, although a demographic problem, requires an economic rather than a demographic solution. Europe still has much work to do to make the labour-market and pension reforms that are needed to counter the adverse effects of its ageing population.

This article focuses on international migration and the difficulty in keeping track of legal and illegal immigrants. International migrants, defined as people who have lived outside their homeland for a year or more, account for under 3% of the world's population: a total, in 2000, of may be 1500 people. Counting migrants is horrendously difficult, even when they are legal. Between 1989 and 1998, gross flows of immigrants into America and into Europe, were similar, relative to population size. America at least thinks of itself as an immigrant land. But for many European countries the surge of arrivals in the 1990s came as a shock. Asia too saw a burst of immigration in the 1990s, propelled initially by the region's economic boom.

Discusses the migration statistics in Europe. Efforts to count the number of legal migrants in Europe; View that migration data are unreliable; Way that immigrants are offered temporary residence permits in countries such as Switzerland; Lack of population registers in Great Britain and France.

This article looks at falling fertility rates in Europe, most notably Germany. In most countries with low fertility, young women have their first child late, and stop at one. In Germany, women with children often have two or three. But many have none at all. Germany is also odd in experiencing low fertility for such a long time. Its fertility rate fell below 2 in 1971. But it has stayed low and is still only just above 1.3. This challenges the notion that European fertility is likely to stabilise at tolerable levels.

The constitutional convention on Europe's future finally packed its bags last week in Brussels. The dramatic change in Europe's demographic profile will weigh far more heavily on the continent's future than the institutional minutiae that have been preoccupying the conventioneers. Fertility rates across Europe are now so low that the continent's population is likely to drop markedly over the next 50 years. The United Nations (UN) predicts that the world's population will increase from just over 6 billion in 2000 to 8.9 billion by 2050. During the same period, however, the population of the 27 countries that should be members of the European Union (EU) by 2007 is predicted to fall by 6%, from 482m to 454m. Combine a shrinking population with rising life expectancy, and the economic and political consequences are alarming. Since pensions in Germany, France and Italy are paid out of current tax revenue, the obvious implication is that taxes will have to soar to fund the pretty generous pensions that Europeans have gotten used to. It is no accident that in the past year France, Austria, Italy and Germany have all experienced angry outbreaks of labor unrest, sparked by attempts to make their pension systems less generous. The tide of immigrants, legal and illegal, crossing the sea is an obvious reaction. So shouldn't Europe be more liberal about immigration, to redress its population imbalance? The inflow of immigrants is causing political strains, with anti-immigration politicians like France's Jean-Marie Le Pen, Italy's Umberto Bossi and the Netherlands' late Pim Fortuyn popping up all over Europe.

Reports population trends for Europe as of January 2000. Reports by the United Nations population monitors and Eurostat, the European Union's (EU) statistical office; Number of EU citizens, decline in number of children, and increased lifespans of EU citizens; Predictions as to declining populations in various European countries, including Italy; Impact of immigration on the trends.

Examines the decline in Europe's population. Decline in Central and Eastern Europe due to factors such as declining birth rate, rising death rate, and emigration; The birth rate of the European Union (EU) as a whole in 1995, and also individually by various nations.