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Science 28 March 2003:
Vol. 299. no. 5615, pp. 1991 - 1992
DOI: 10.1126/science.1080316
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Policy Forum

DEMOGRAPHICS:
Enhanced: Europe's Population at a Turning Point

Wolfgang Lutz,* Brian C. O'Neill, Sergei Scherbov

Low birthrates in Europe have begun to generate negative population momentum, a new force for population shrinkage over the coming decades. Birthrates are low partly because of the current trend in Europe toward bearing children at later and later ages. A continuation of this trend could substantially exacerbate future aging of the population and contribute to a future decline in population size. Social policies and labor laws aimed at halting further increases in the mean age of childbearing are proposed in this Policy Forum.

W. Lutz and S. Scherbov are at the Vienna Institute of Demography, Austrian Academy of Sciences, A-1040 Vienna, Austria, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria; B. C. O'Neill is at IIASA and the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: lutz{at}iiasa.ac.at

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