President Xi Jinping recently told Communist Party's 20th Congress that China would establish a policy to boost birth rates and improve the country's population development strategy. Read more

In Rome on Friday, Italy's prime minister, Mario Draghi, and Pope Francis were the star attendees at a special conference to discuss the country's declining birthrate.

According to the latest figures, 2020 saw the lowest number of births recorded since the Italian unification in 1861.

Spain is ageing at a similar pace, as is much of eastern Europe.

In Britain, it is the same story.

The Centre for Population Change recently predicted a post-pandemic decline in annual births, deepening a secular trend that has already taken the birthrate to "historically low levels".

The social implications of these downward trajectories, exacerbated by Covid, are many and various.

Assuming current demographic trends continue, Eurostat has calculated that the number of European over-65s will have grown by over 40% by 2050.

Fewer people will be in work paying taxes when their pension and care bills arrive.

Against that backdrop, right-wing nationalist parties fantasising about a future without migrant labour may as well howl at the moon.

Immigration seems likely to continue to be a structural necessity in western democracies, as well as a source of innovation and renewal.

But this is about more than the big picture.

For many young people, one of the most fundamental sources of human fulfilment - parenthood - is being delayed or forgone out of economic necessity.

Procreation should not be seen as a moral obligation, let alone as a patriotic duty.

Since the 1960s, with the rise of contraception, declining western birthrates have been partly a result of greater freedom for women to shape and control their own lives.

But starting a family should be a far easier option than it has become.

Even in Scandinavia, rightly held up as a model when it comes to parental leave and accessible childcare, alarm bells are ringing.

The Norwegian prime minister, Erna Solberg, has warned that one of Europe's best-funded welfare states could only be socially and economically sustainable if people had more children.

In Sweden, the annual number of births has consistently fallen for over a decade, constituting a new and worrying trend according to the country's leading demographers. Continue reading

Source

• Editorial: The Guardian

Lord Jonathan Sacks said European society as it currently is "will die" because of a demographic crisis.

He warned that even mass immigration is not a solution because of problems integrating new arrivals into existing society.

Lord Sacks gave an interview to the Daily Telegraph after receiving The Templeton Prize for his work promoting religious understanding.

In the interview, he said similar falling birth rates had been the hallmark of the last days of the Roman Empire.

There was, he said, "no question" that this poses a serious threat to the future of western civilisation as it has been known.

"The contemporary historian[s] of ancient Greece and ancient Rome saw their civilisations begin their decline and fall, both the Greeks and the Romans attributed it to falling birth rates because nobody wanted the responsibilities of bringing up children," he said.

"They were too focussed on enjoying the present to make the sacrifices necessary to build the future . . . all the historians of civilisation have told the same story."

"Europe is going to die because of this because Europe can only maintain its population by unprecedented levels of immigration," said the former Chief Rabbi.

"Now those could be integrated into Europe but they won't be integrated into Europe because when a culture loses its memory it loses its identity and when a culture loses its identity there's nothing left for people to integrate into."

He argued that demographic change could be linked a loss of religious faith in the West, which for centuries has been associated with a high regard for the institution of the family.

"Contemporary historians . . . right now, have failed to find a single historical example of a society that became secularised and maintained its birth rate over subsequent centuries," he argued.

He added: "That's how great civilisations decline and fall."

Sources

• The Telegraph
• Image: Becket Fund