TOO FEW BABIES

One of the themes of this blog has been that Denmark will not be able to continue to afford the world's most expensive welfare state without major structural changes. There are simply too few workers paying the taxes that can support the hordes of pensioners that either already exist or will leave the labour market during the next two decades.

One way to solve the problem would be if those workers were replaced by new ones. Yet that is highly unlikely. The number of births last year was 57,916, the lowest figure for 26 years. With those sorts of numbers, not only is the demographic profile of the population ageing, but the population itself is falling.

This is not a problem confined to Denmark, virtually all European countries are wrestling with the same issues. Indeed, Europe is the only continent where the population will fall during the next 30 years. This will avoid some problems (eg land pressure) which are prevalent elsewhere in the world; but it does mean that the pressure on the individual of working age is likely to rise.

Walter Blotscher