Bye-bye Balkans, A Region in Critical Demographic Decline

[Mingle]

The title and focus of the article is the Balkans, but this applies to Eastern Europe in general.

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Then, Balkan countries exhibited the classic demographic and emigration characteristics of poor countries. Today they exhibit the symptoms of both rich and poor countries simultaneously. This is unprecedented.

People in the Balkans live long lives — not quite as long as in the richer countries of Europe, but much longer than in poorer countries.

At the same time, just as in the richer countries, fertility rates have collapsed.

But while Western countries compensate for falling birth rates and emigration with immigration, relatively few people immigrate to Balkan countries.

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All governments are well aware of the situation but struggle to know what to do about it, or lack the means to do much.

In Croatia, young couples can get government-subsidised mortgages but you have to have enough money to put down in the first place and the numbers of mortgages available and couples eligible are tiny compared with the scale of the problem.

Where they can, countries give allowances to women and families with more children but there is no evidence, at least yet, that any of this can persuade them to have more children.

In much wealthier Poland, which has given considerable fiscal advantages to lower income families, the money has both helped them and made them staunch supporters of the ruling Law and Justice party, but they don’t seem to be having more kids.

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Why do people migrate? It is not only money. It is education, healthcare and services too — and increasingly it is because people have lost hope that they will ever live in normal, democratic and as uncorrupted societies as possible.

By the time countries get richer, large segments of the population have already lived abroad and want the same standards of life, including social services, as they have experienced in those Western countries.

But what is the evidence from the one part of the former communist world which solved the problem of fiscal transfers? It is not encouraging. Eastern Germany continues to depopulate almost three decades after reunification.

To slow and hopefully reverse the decline, governments need to make countries that people want to live in. That is not rocket science, but maybe it is too late.

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https://balkaninsight.com/2019/10/14...aphic-decline/

[Daco Celtic]

What if American Euro mutts replopulated the Balkans?

[Decius]

Every country in Europe is in demographic decline pretty much.

[catgeorge]

Balkans are miserable and want to leave if its not warring.

[AmeriCanadian]

When a population goes extinct they take their language, customs and history with them. That diminishes all of humanity.

[AmeriCanadian]

Disregard

[Universe]

The birth rate of white people in Western Europe is just as low. The only difference is Western Europe receives lots of (mostly) non-white immigration.

[Universe]

What if American Euro mutts replopulated the Balkans?

They're busy virtue signaling on social media and paying their loans back to think about things like this. They'd consider Balkans to be underdeveloped probably too. Then again I was watching this African-American vlogger on youtube, she lives in Serbia and she said she liked it there because her meds are a lot cheaper there than in the USA.

[Ülev]

yes, but what is the alternative, and why anybody should wants "refugees are welcome"?

Poland - area 312,696[6] km2, population 38,383,000[8] (37th)
Finland - area 338,424 km2, population 5,528,737[2] (116th)

[Dušan]

The birth rate of white people in Western Europe is just as low. The only difference is Western Europe receives lots of (mostly) non-white immigration.

+1