European Population Trends — A Challenge for Societies under Constant Innovation Pressures

Abstract

EEC-countries undergo a similar demographic trend: fertility levels below generational replacement and population ageing through proportional decrease of the young and rising survival rates among old age groups. This trend has taken place notwithstanding the differences which the vital rates of serveral EEC-countries may show. They will face a demographically-induced crisis as younger age groups having become small during the “baby bust” will flow now into the age of formation and activity. It is taken for granted that, for the sake of the maintenance of Social security and living standards, and also for keeping up with competitors on the world market, productivity must not loose its dynamics. For the next decades, technological progress will dominate the labor force recruitment and continue to change constantly the working places. As goods imply an ever bigger part of “brain work”, the active population must be adapted to the growing sophistication of manufacturing and steering processes in postindustrialism. EEC-countries will be forced to countervail the ageing of the labour force by manpower mobilization and selective immigration. Any strategy, however, aiming at a renewal of the labour force has its shortcomings and undesired by-products which the EEC must take into account and act against. EEC will have to decide whether a reactive policy should be conceived on common grounds or left over to the member states for the sake of more efficiency and public acceptance.