European Union does not grant harmonized solution of demographic problems: part 2

Many European countries are missing in the first part of this post. All they deserve to be presented but we illustrate the diversity of and similarities in population trajectories rather than create a comprehensive view on the development in EU demography. We still use the OECD database which allows covering the century between 1950 and 2050. Here we present a few older EU representatives together with newcomers.  Figure 1 demonstrates that three East European countries: Poland, Bulgaria and Czech Republic and five western countries with longer capitalist economic history.  Germany serves as a watershed for these two groups of countries.

Bulgaria  shows behavior similar to that in Latvia and Lithuania - extremely steep depopulation trajectory after 1990. According to the OECD projection, Bulgaria  will lose from more than  40% of its population measured in 1990.  Depopulation is striking and dangerous for survival as a nation. Poland and Czech Republic are similar to Germany – approximately 5% to 10% fall in total population before 2050.  

Switzerland looks to have all chances to succeed in healthy population growth together with Austria, who also shows gradual growth into the future. Spain, Italy and Holland are a bit controversial but also have hopes for future population rise in the next decades.

Taking into account France and the UK in the previous post one can conclude that East European countries that entered the EU are all are prone to depopulation of varying degree, while the founding members feel much better. 

Figure 1. the evolution of total population in selected EU countries between 1950 and 2050. All curves are normalized to their respective values in 1990.