By 2030, that figure is projected to increase to one in four. Census Bureau’s International Database shows that today nearly 20 percent of people in Western Europe are over the age of 65.

Europeans might have stopped procreating, but they have not stopped engaging in perhaps the one thing more natural than having children: aging. “And the ratio is moving closer to one-to-three,” a Spanish business consultant told the Guardian in 2015.īut declining birth rates are only half the story. In many provinces in Spain, two people die for every child born. In Portugal, the population has been steadily decreasing since 2010, prompting the nation’s then-prime minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, to publicly acknowledge, “We’ve got really serious problems” with demographics. In Germany, 40 percent of women with college degrees are childless, according to a recent study by the Gatestone Institute. Government statistics show that in the United Kingdom, one of the most fertile nations in Europe, just 14 percent of families have three or more children. The royal couple is clearly doing its fair share to address Europe’s looming population nightmare, which in recent years has been described alternately a “ crisis,” a “ disaster,” and “ the end of the West.”Īre Europe’s demographics truly this apocalyptic?Ī third child would put William and Kate at double the average birthrate in the European Union, which stood at 1.55 in 2013. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, known less formally as Prince William and Princess Kate, announced over Labor Day weekend that they are expecting their third child.Ĭongratulations are in order, and not merely for the customary reasons.

Prince work it 2.0