Goodbye to All That: Will Italy and rest of Europe depopulate itself to extinction?

The Dallas Morning News via The Weekly Standard ^ | April 30, 2004 | Terry Eastland

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Siena, Italy – In 1348, the Black Death took the lives of 70,000 of this city's 100,000 inhabitants. Siena, whose exquisite art still amazes, never again had a population that large. Today, it numbers just 56,000.

The Black Death was traced to infected rats aboard a merchant ship from the Crimea that stopped in Sicily. The diseases carried by those rats ravaged not only Italy but all of Europe. The loss of life ranged from 12 percent in a city or region to the 70 percent reported in Siena. "No one wept for the dead," wrote a denizen of the devastated city, "because everyone expected death himself."

Today, a visitor to Italy is struck by the fact that demographic destruction is occurring once again, though this time more slowly. There is no Black Death, no communicable disease that the destruction can be blamed on. But the fact is that Italy is depopulating itself, and it is doing so by human choice. Procreation, you could say, is suffering. Simply put, Italians are having very few babies — actually, too few for Italy to survive.

Italy now has the lowest birthrate (1.23 children per woman) in Europe and the second lowest in the world. If Italy's "rate of reproduction continues," London's Sunday Telegraph recently noted, "Italians will slowly but surely die out."

A similar demographic destruction is visiting other European countries, for most of them also have birthrates well below what is necessary to maintain current population levels (thought to be 2.1 children per woman). Consider that the population of Spain will decline from 40 million to 31.3 million by 2050 if the birthrate in that country persists unchanged.

It isn't hard to see the immediate problems facing a Europe lacking sufficiently high birthrates. Most obviously, the lavish, cradle-to-grave welfare states found throughout the continent will want for new workers and the taxes they would pay — unless immigration soars. But immigration brings its own problems, not least (in a post-September 11 world) terrorism and the cells that support it.

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[Gritty]

LOL!