More People In Europe Are Dying Than Are Being Born (phys.org)

jones_supa writes: More people in Europe are dying than are being born, according to a new report co-authored by a Texas A&M University demographer. In contrast, births exceed deaths, by significant margins, in Texas and elsewhere in the United States, with few exceptions. The researchers find that in Europe, deaths exceeded births in most of the counties of Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, as well as in Sweden and the Baltic States. Further south, natural decrease is found occurring in the majority of the counties of Greece, Portugal and Italy. More births than deaths (natural increase) is widespread in Ireland, Cyprus, Iceland, Lichtenstein and Luxembourg. "Natural decrease is much more common in Europe than in the U.S because its population is older, fertility rates are lower and there are fewer women of child-bearing age," the researchers explain. "Natural decrease is a major policy concern because it drains the demographic resilience from a region diminishing its economic viability and competitiveness."

Comments

invite more people in?

[known_coward_69]

that's what the US is doing

Re:invite more people in?

[cayenne8]

I think it means, if this trend keeps up, that EU culture, the Germans, the French, etc....will possibly start to disappear, being replaced with the Muslims that are pouring in, staying isolated and not melting into the EU cultures, and they are reproducing at a greater rate.

I guess this is how the long term "revenge" for the crusades will happen. If the Muslim populations get high enough, they can vote in the changes to the laws and the old world cultures will fade.

Re:invite more people in?

[LubosD]

Seriously, the difference between the US and Italian / Irish cultures is nothing compared to the difference between Europeans and Arabs / Africans.

Re:invite more people in?

[tnk1]

I don't want to suggest that Muslims in Europe cannot or will not assimilate, but the Irish and even the Italians had more similarities to the population in the US at the time than the Muslims do with the Europeans now. And there was a great amount of both interest and motivation in assimilating back then because no one cared much whether cultures were being oppressed or not, so you assimilated or you failed to thrive.

Today, there's both larger cultural differences, mixed with more tolerance of other cultures which has the unfortunate side-effect of making it easier to resist assimilation.

While I can't really make a distinction of what culture is "better", I do know that mixing cultures which are resistant to intermixing and assimilation is a recipe for serious civil strife. That's a serious danger for the future of Europe if they can't find some way to cope with the influx peacefully.

Re:invite more people in?

[dlt074]

you don't know which culture is "better"? you may be a victim of political correctness. i'm not so let me help you a bit.

the one that doesn't believe in killing and raping the infidels is better.
the one that believes woman are equal to men is better.
the one that believes in not killing homo sexuals is better.

the list goes on, but it always comes back to western culture is better!

Re:invite more people in?

[NotDrWho]

Except most Chinatowns in the U.S. are where non-Chinese people go to eat exotic food, not a separate city-within-a-city where any non-Chinese who enter will be beaten (or worse).

Re:invite more people in?

[saider]

Unless that culture results in lower birthrates, then the killing, raping, misogynistic homophobic culture is better - in an evolutionary sense.

Re:invite more people in?

[Beck_Neard]

You think muslims around the world are all part of some grand conspiracy to 'take revenge' for the crusades? No, they're just people who see the much greater opportunities and wealth available in European countries compared to the shitholes they live in, and make the rational decision to move there for personal gain.

As for the 'decline' of Europe, they may be decreasing in number, sure, but they are definitely increasing in wealth (positive economic growth) with the effect that wealth and power is becoming concentrated in the hands of fewer individuals. Raw population size is a poor measure of the well-being of a country, otherwise India and China would be the best places to live.

Re:invite more people in?

[stanjo74]

This. There is a difference between immigration and diaspora. Immigrants are typically very open minded members of their society - they are looking for new opportunities because their own society at home is holding them back.
What we have in Europe right now is a diaspora - people from a totally foreign culture forced to live with another. Of course, one can argue that the refugees are in Europe by their own will, but the economic and social hardships in their own countries is so bad, that I would consider this a diaspora.

The political correctness of the hosts will allow the new foreign culture not to assimilate, and the children of these foreigners will end up outsiders in their own country. At least when there was conscription army in Europe, young males were forcefully mingled with other members of the society. Nowadays, young males are left isolated, exploited and desperate in their own ghettos, ripe for extremist brainwashing centered around their foreign culture and ethnicity.

Re:invite more people in?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because the USA (and Canada) are blessed by a great filter called the Atlantic Ocean, which lets through people who

a) Passed the immigration criteria for work/residence/background check
b) Can afford a transatlantic ticket and can sustain themselves after becoming a resident

It would be natural that the more westernized immigrants would be coming over.

That does not appear to be the case in Europe. Closer proximity and lower risk of making the land and sea voyages does not filter out the "cream of the crop", like it does in the Americas.

Re:invite more people in?

[R3d M3rcury]

We have that here in the US. Heck, I live right near Little Saigon.

Guess what? Moving someplace with a weird language and weird customs and weird food can be tough. My roommate's family came over from Vietnam in the 1990s. Their english language skills weren't great and Little Saigon offered them places to go and things to do which were comfortable. While they have assimilated to a degree, they still tend to go to Little Saigon for restaurants (though they'll shop elsewhere for other things).

Their kids, on the other hand? For the most part, they're "assimilated." They speak english, enjoy "American" food, enjoy the culture, and barely speak the native language.

So, yes, these "immigrant" neighborhoods will grow because there are more immigrants coming in who need that support. Those immigrants will meet people, fall in love, have kids, and those kids will have more experience with the native culture than that of their parents. Give it a generation or two.

Re:invite more people in?

[Darinbob]

They used to be a separate city where non-Chinese would not enter. People used to complain that Chinese, Italians, whoever were not properly integrating. By which they meant abandoning their own culture and embracing the mayonaisse of American "culture". It's only over time that those other cultures became mixed in better, but the US embraced (badly) parts of their culture instead. We even bitched about the Irish and you can't get any whiter than that.

The melting pot concept is stupid, it just doesn't work to expect immigrants to abandon the old and become clones. There was too much effort spent in the past on forced conformity in many places in US and elsewhere; forcing children to go to English speaking schools and punishing them when their native language was used so that it becomes forgotten over time (most native American languages are functionally dead, children who can't communicate with their grandparents, etc).

Re:invite more people in?

[elrous0]

The melting pot concept is stupid

Yeah, except your own post demonstrates that it has worked just fine in the U.S.:

They used to be a separate city where non-Chinese would not enter.

Emphasis mine

Re:invite more people in?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are different kinds of immigrant Muslims. The well integrated, secular Muslims whose children or grand children might be as Muslim as the current European is Christian: more than half non believer, but happy to join the families to keep the tradition alive.

Many Muslims however don't want to integrate. They want to live in Islamic states within the state, where shariah law overrules the states law. If something happens within their community, shariah law will solve it. Police has nothing to say in those area's. These area's where pretty small in the past, but with their 8 children on average and the fact that 50% of them choose a husband/wife from the ultra conservative homeland, means that for every 'radical' Muslim woman there are on average 12 new radical Muslims.

This causes a lot of problems. Their are too many of them to contain them within their own 'state within the state' and they demand the local people to adjust their habits to their culture. My local school now only serves Halal food, and all local (white) politicians don't have a problem with this. This year the exams are even postponed because Muslim kids are in the middle or the Ramadan. This means that for many families there is no vacation this year. The majority of the middle class people go on summer holiday the week after graduation. This year graduation is postponed with 3 weeks and most workers can't postpone their free days with 3 weeks.

In the local public pool it is no longer available for males 3 days a week. It's woman only. The woman are no longer allowed to where a normal swimming gear (bad suit / bikini), they should wear one that covers the entire body, legs and arms. This is because some imam interpreted this rule somewhere in the koran.

Several examples of how the white people have to adjust to the Muslims. Everyone who criticizes these decisions is either a racist an islamophobe or a xenophobe.

And these aren't people who moved to my country, these are third, fourth and even fifth generations of families who never wanted to integrate. They were all born in this country and always rejected all values that our country stands for.

They also reject our hard fought for values of freedom, freedom of speech and democracy. They want to replace the current laws with Shariah laws, but since they are only with 12% today, they don't have the democratic majority. With the recent mass immigration their numbers will probably double within 10 years. The immigrants are mostly males and still have to bring their wife(s) and children once they get their citizenship. This means that within 20 years or so, their children will have voting power, and the Muslim parties might become the largest party in our country.

When you look at the failure to integrate immigrants that started to come in the late 50's, and the failure to integrate their offspring who always use racism as an excuse, I don't believe that the new immigrant will ever integrate (with a few exceptions of course).

Homophobia and sexism is back alive an kicking, and gay people can no longer walk around the streets like they did 10 years ago. Woman are afraid to walk alone to work or public transport. The police can't control the situation anymore and rich people use private security services to protect themselves. In just a few years political correctness has managed to create the society they feared: a police state, but this time without police but with private security firms on one side and shariah 'police' squads on the other side. The Shariah squad is making patrols in my village. A few weeks ago I was halted by them and they warned me about my running gear. Short pants are not allowed, they are no allowed to come above the knee... Now what can you do against such a squad? They are armed with sticks, police doesn't do anything, so I just stopped doing my daily run... Some people aren't even allowed to let their dogs out because that Shariah squad says Mohamed didn't like dogs, so nobody should let dogs out.

My region is

Re:invite more people in?

[peragrin]

The melt pot is working though. Those areas fall apart. People move, grow old, look for jobs, they rarely stay in one place. Europe was heavily divided by nationalities until recently. The USA has survived multiculturalism because people could move all over in search for jobs.

That ability is less than a decade old in Europe. It will take 20-30 years for the effect to be felt.

Melting pot is alive and well in the USA Is you need proof look up Italian, French,indian, Chinese , Thai , restaurants. In an given city. If you need more proof, look at a grocery store. You can get all sorts of food.

Re:invite more people in?

[Jack Griffin]

The melting pot concept is stupid, it just doesn't work to expect immigrants to...

It works, just over longer time frames than you are expecting.

Re:invite more people in?

[PPalmgren]

The U.S. Melting Pot has one big thing that these other countries lack: a lack of history. People in the US are not resistant to their immigrant compatriots adoptiong American culture, and in fact readily share it. Most European countries like Italy, Greece, France, and so on, have a hidden yet obvious nationalistic bias tied to heritage. In France or Italy, you will never become a true Frenchman/Italian as an immigrant even if you adopt their culture, whereas in America, the Indian who Americanizes him/herself is applauded rather than shunned.

In Europe, ethnicity is closely tied to nationalism, and the borders are drawn accordingly. That is not the case in the US because the only native ethnicity available is one that was sadly wiped out.

Integration

[Etherwalk]

Do you actually live in Europe? Integration does not work. We have whole suburbs of "insert immigrant nationality" because they don't integrate. Even politicians have to admit that multiculturalism failed. The cultures are just too different and there are far too many at the same time.

Except when it does. If you have a large, secular society that orients more along the lines of politics than race, culture, or religion, than over time immigrants and more importantly the children of immigrants become part of the larger society. Some people are real jerks to outsiders no matter where they are or what culture they join--the idea is over generations to try to get their kids to be more and more accepting of outsiders, to be part of the larger community.

Integration is not an experiment that succeeds or fails. It's life, and people and even entire populations change across as little as fifty years. That explains everybody's racist uncle.

Re:Integration

[mjwx]

Do you actually live in Europe? Integration does not work. We have whole suburbs of "insert immigrant nationality" because they don't integrate. Even politicians have to admit that multiculturalism failed. The cultures are just too different and there are far too many at the same time.

Except when it does. If you have a large, secular society that orients more along the lines of politics than race, culture, or religion, than over time immigrants and more importantly the children of immigrants become part of the larger society. Some people are real jerks to outsiders no matter where they are or what culture they join--the idea is over generations to try to get their kids to be more and more accepting of outsiders, to be part of the larger community.

Integration is not an experiment that succeeds or fails. It's life, and people and even entire populations change across as little as fifty years. That explains everybody's racist uncle.

This.

If integration is such a failure, explain why England and Anglo cultures are still around? We've been integrating for literally centuries. When a new group of immigrants comes over, they slowly become part of the fabric of a nation. If they don't it is almost always the fault of the host nation for forcing them into ghettos and disallowing them the chance to participate in a nations culture.

Australia treated the Greeks pretty badly when they first started coming to Oz post-war. They were called "New Australians" and some stores flat out refused to serve New Australians. However the Greeks responded by becoming part of Australian society over time. They stopped being New Australians and just started being Australians. They adopted a lot of Australian traditions but this is a two way street. Some Greek traditions became part of Australian society. This process usually ends up with the best parts of a new culture being integrated in, usually food, celebrations and parts of the langauge as people travelling to a new country tend to only want to keep the parts they liked about a society.

Its the same with Italian Americans who bought pasta, not Fascism to the US or British Indians who bought curry, not bad hygiene to the UK.

The racists always complain that immigrants "dont speak the English" whilst this is ONLY partially true the racists like to ignore the fact that their children will speak English as their primary language if not, their only language. Integration is a process that takes a generation. Claiming it has failed after 5 years is stupidly short sighted.

Having grown up in Australia, I've heard all this bollocks before. First it was the Asians who would take all our jobs and destroy our culture, then it was the Indians, Now its the Muslims. Next decade, it'll be someone else. Same bollocks with a different target and not once have their predictions of doom and gloom come true. When I was 8, the local Racist league told me I'd never get a job because all the Gooks were coming over to take them. Guess what, I've been gainfully employed for the most part since I was 17 (which is over 15 years ago). I bet that same idiot is sitting in the same shitty part of Adelaide spewing the same nonsense... the only thing that has changed is "Gook" is now "Muslim".

Re:Integration

[sociocapitalist]

"If integration is such a failure, explain why England and Anglo cultures are still around? We've been integrating for literally centuries. When a new group of immigrants comes over, they slowly become part of the fabric of a nation. If they don't it is almost always the fault of the host nation for forcing them into ghettos and disallowing them the chance to participate in a nations culture."

There is a difference between a culture who is willing to integrate and a culture who expects everyone else to adapt to them. When the percentage of the latter in a community is small, the children, at least, will integrate over time. When you get enough of the latter together in a community they then refuse to integrate with the existing community - when the percentage is high enough not only do they refuse to integrate but they expect the integration to be reversed and the community to adopt the immigrant culture.

When you have a great influx of immigrants they tend to stay together in the same areas. This is not 'forcing them into ghettos' but a self-made situation where people who speak the same language, have the same religion, etc. want to live near others of the same.

Here in France there is, and has been for quite awhile, an ongoing effort to keep ghettos from forming. Developers of new housing estates are required to provide some percentage of the new construction as social housing and low income families are then distributed across the country instead of being localized.

So no, I do not agree that the problem we see today is necessarily the fault of host countries, unless the fault is to allow such rapid immigration of a culture that refuses to integrate with the existing culture whenever enough of them are present in an area to put pressure on each other to conform to their religious constraints.

And yet, productivity is rising.

[duckintheface]

"Natural decrease is a major policy concern because it drains the demographic resilience from a region diminishing its economic viability and competitiveness." What a silly argument, given that productivity and and GDP are still rising rapidly in Europe.

Automation is accelerating with AI finally becoming a real thing. Economic output is rising in absolute terms and on a per-person basis. What this should mean is a rising standard of living. But in the US all the benefits of per capita productivity are going to the "owner class". This is the stuff of revolutions.

As long as there are intelligent, healthy people who are unemployed, the birth rate has not fallen enough.

Re:And yet, productivity is rising.

[russotto]

Between the bad Eurozone (economic) conditions and the recent resurgence of Fascism in Europe, it's looking like Europe's second renaissance may come to an end soon.

If you want to stop a resurgence of fascism, try addressing the issues the Fascists are addressing. Give people the choice of thugs who appear to be on their side, or open minded decent politicians who are willing to allow hostile thugs to run rampant for the sake of their ideology, people will often pick door #1.

That means you do not open the doors wide to people from incompatible cultures, and then demand that your current residents accomodate their culture. And especially you do not tell everyone complaining about crime committed by those migrants that they're racists and should just shut up.

Not revenge, just their old pattern

[MikeRT]

I guess this is how the long term "revenge" for the crusades will happen.

Between the death of Mohammed and the time of the First Crusade, the following happened:

1. The Caliphate invaded and destroyed the Persian Empire. [Much conversion by the sword of Zoroastrians]
2. The Caliphate took control of over 50% of the Byzantine Empire. [Mass conversion by the sword of Christians]
3. The Caliphate conquered the Iberian peninsula and attempted to conquer the Merovingian Empire in modern day France.
4. All throughout that period and well into the Renaissance, Muslim pirates and raiders took huge numbers of slaves from Southern Europe and coastal territories as far as Iceland.

So no, not revenge. Just a series of efforts by the Muslim world to expand rather violently.

And after that period we have the annexation of much of Eastern Europe, Lepanto, Vienna, need I go on? Anyone who goes "oh noes, teh Crusades" about anyone other than the poor Orthodox Greeks is an ignoramus.

Crusaders sacked Constantinople

[XXongo]

(remember that the rescue of the Byzantine Empire was the original motivation for the Crusades--the whole thing was ignited by the Byzantine disaster at Manzikert, after all.)

Uh, the crusaders didn't protect Constantinople-- they sacked it.

It was richer, and less well defended, than the Islamic lands that they were nominally aimed at, and they wanted the loot. The crusaders were not the good guys in this portion of history.

If you want to know, why did Constantinople fall to the Moslems? The answer is, it fell because it never really recovered from being sacked by the Fourth crusade.

http://www.historytoday.com/jo...
http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/1204.html
http://www.historynet.com/fourth-crusade-conquest-of-constantinople.htm

Re:and how long before the next Hitler comes to st

[Dunbal]

There will be no "next Hitler", just like there will be no "next Napoleon". Certainly Hitler was no Napoleon. Napoleon was a military genius but his famous military accomplishments (having lost very few battles despite at times tremendous odds against him) were far shorter lived than his achievement with re-writing and organizing law: the Napoleonic Code lives on today in many guises because it makes sense. Hitler was an appalling strategist, an amateur tactician at best (who got lucky a very few times), a ruthless and reckless politician who however managed to motivate a demotivated people through his obsession with national spirit and national identity - crucial for a broken people who had lost everything through a devastating war, revolt and punitive blockade and reparations.

Of course there can always be someone worse than Hitler in the future. But the times are different and the solution will therefore be different.

population

[Smiddi]

Population growth and reduction (in this case) is NOT the issue. The issue is that economies have been created and will only work based on population (and subsequent sales) growth; this is why immigration is often "used" to keep a countries population growing. As soon as sales reduce the model falls over. A re-think of the way global economies operate is what is needed.

Why do you hate America so much?

[denzacar]

the one that doesn't believe in killing and raping the infidels is better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.
We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers.
We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.

the one that believes in not killing homo sexuals is better.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/...

...on Friday's Republican campaign event, showing videos of Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal and Mike Huckabee engaging in question-and-answer sessions with extremist pastor Kevin Swanson, who then went on to say that he would smear cow dung over his body to protest a gay couple's wedding and urged the government to execute gays in the future if they don't repent.

the one that believes woman are equal to men is better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That last one is a longer read.
But it includes such gems as "legitimate rape", sexual assaults in the military excused as "hormone level created by nature" and last but not least - rape as god's will.

P.S. Dear, right-wing, moderators... we can play this game of you trying to ignore facts while calling pointing out such facts trolling until you run out of mod points or I run out of copy/paste.