Eastern Europe in the grip of a plummeting demography

Central and Eastern Europe has cause for concern. Among the sixty countries expected to see their population decrease significantly (1% or more) by 2050 are Russia, Germany, South Korea and Cuba. But it is the former Soviet bloc that will lose the most, according to the latest UN projections.

The fall is set to exceed 20% over the next thirty years in Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Serbia and Ukraine. For the latter, this is nothing new, even if the war launched on February 24 by Russia has considerably aggravated the pre-existing situation. By the end of May, the ongoing conflict had resulted in the displacement of 13 million people, including 6.8 million refugees who had gone abroad.

Ukraine approached 52 million inhabitants at the beginning of the 1990s, had only 43 million in 2021 and could drop below 33 million in 2050. Like its neighbours, it suffers from two chronic ailments: a low birth rate and high emigration. “Almost all Eastern European countries have had low fertility levels, around 1.5 births per woman or less, for twenty or thirty years”, says one at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Far, therefore, from the replacement threshold (2.1 births per woman) that can guarantee the renewal of generations.

“Very low fertility”

Moreover, since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the difference between entries (immigration) and exits (emigration) has continued to increase, due to a haemorrhage of youth. Bulgaria, which went from 9 million inhabitants in the 1990s to 6.8 million in 2022, could have only 5.2 million in 2050. Serbia had 8 million inhabitants in collapse of the iron curtain. It currently has 7.2 million and could drop to 5.8 million in thirty years. Over the same period, the population of Lithuania could plummet from 3.8 million to 2.2 million, that of Latvia from 2.7 million to 1.4 million.

“Young people leave and, among those who stay, fertility is very low. The question is whether this phenomenon will last or not., analyzes Gilles Pison, scientific advisor to the National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED). However, he warns. “Things can quickly turn around, as we saw in Poland. With its entry into the European Union in 2004, this country experienced significant emigration, while fertility was very low at the time, at 1.22 children per woman, recalls Mr. Pison. Today, this is no longer the case. Poland is once again becoming an attractive country, for Russians and Ukrainians in particular, while the fertility rate has risen” to 1.46 children per woman in 2022 and could reach 1.56 in 2050.

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