Anglican Mainstream

By Peter Brierley, Religious Intelligence

Europe is in decline! While the population in the other five continents in the world increases, the population of Europe goes down. The United Nations gave the population of the world as 6.09 billion in 2000, and estimates it will be 6.69 billion in mid-2008, a growth of 600 million people worldwide in eight years, equivalent to an increase of 207,000 people every day.

Of the 6.09 world billion in 2000, 481 million were in what are now the 27 countries of the European Union (EU) in 2000, and there will be an estimated 480 million in 2008, a small decline, averaging just 300 people per day. The concern is less that the decline is small, but that the general trend in the population is in the opposite direction from what is happening across the rest of the world. An annual increase in five continents of +0.51 per cent per annum (or one new person for every 200 every year) compares with a decrease of -0.02 per cent in the EU.

The projections made by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, are that this trend is likely to continue for at least the first quarter of the 21st century. And the figures emphasise how small is the EU compared with the rest of the world, just 7 per cent of the total in 2008, and likely to be 6 per cent by 2025.

Why is Europe so different? In a nut-shell, it is because we have fewer children, but that simple answer is compounded by a number of different factors. Comparable global figures are difficult to obtain because of the paucity of relevant statistics in many developing countries, but one key indicator is the live birth rate – the number of children born each year in a country for every 100 people. In the EU, the live birth rate 2006 was 1.06, whereas in China it was 1.14, in the United States 1.40 and in India 2.34 – the differences may seem small but multiplied across countries with large populations, the impact is considerable. In the UK the live birth rate in 2006 was 1.24.

The live birth rate is not the same as the conception rate, but comparable data is even more difficult on this topic. It is quite likely, however, that the EU has a rather higher abortion rate than in many parts of the rest of the world, though this may be offset by the lower infant survival rates in other areas of the world.

Fertility rates, the number of children born per woman, which in the UK is 1.74, vary likewise across the world; in Kenya, the country with the highest rate, it is 5.7! In the EU it is 1.61. Having smaller families, that is, fewer children, obviously has an impact since it also means that the ratio of the number of older people to younger increases. This ratio becomes greater when the higher level of health provision in the EU compared with many developing countries is taken into account. People in the EU could expect to live to 75 in 2006. This older: younger ratio is a fast-changing statistic in the EU – 40 per cent in 2006 it is likely to become 80 per cent by 2050.

What all this implies is that the EU is becoming a continent of older people, while the continents in the developing world are much younger people. While this has many implications for future demographics, what of the implications for the church, especially in the UK?

The UK in general demographic terms is in better shape than the EU as a whole – larger ratio of live births, smaller abortion rate (22 per cent in 2006), lower than in many EU countries, slightly larger families and so on. However, some of the trends are similar – our old age dependency ratio (40 per cent in 2006) rises to 54 per cent by 2025 and 70 per cent by 2050, and we too are losing young people (so our average age as a country is also rising). For example, in the 2000 there were 7.3 million youngsters under the age of 10 in the UK. By 2011 that number will be down to 7.0 million; in 2000 we had 3.8 million ‘tweenagers’ between 10 and 14, a number set to become 3.5 million by 2011. We are decreasing the number under 15 in the UK at the rate of 63,000 a year, an average annual percentage decline of -0.58 per cent.

Applied to the church we all know that we are losing young people, and some of that loss is because our “market” is shrinking slightly. However, the loss of young people under 15 in the church between 2000 and 2010 is at an annual rate of -4.76 per cent, eight times the rate of natural loss. The church’s “dependency ratio”, the number of people 65 and over to the number 18 and under, is already in 2005 over 100 per cent (in fact 121 per cent!) , which simply re-inforces a point frequently made that unless collectively we can re-engage the numbers of young people in the church we speedily head towards disaster. The church in the UK is in greater demographic trouble than the EU!

Dr Peter Brierley is a church consultant who may be reached on peter@brierleyres.com

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.