Population ageing affects labour supply and the sustainability of social security systems. This is particularly evident at the local level, where some territories, such as rural ones, are more exposed to rapid ageing and depopulation. In this context, internal or international migration can play a substantial role, offsetting population decline caused by low fertility in some cases, or accelerating it in others. 
Overall, the policy debate has focused on the role of international migration to rejuvenate the population, revitalise the economy and mitigate labour shortages. What is the situation in the territories of the EU?

Migration rarely compensates for negative cohort turnover in EU regions

In a recent article, we assess the relative contribution of migration to shaping the demographic evolution of the working-age population (15-64 years) of 1,166 European territories (NUTS3), separately by three classes of urbanisation: urban, intermediate, and rural (Ghio et al. 2022). We decompose the changes in the population of working age that occurred from 2015 to 2019 into: 

1) cohort turnover effects, meaning the difference between those who have just entered the working-age group (15-19 years) and those who are about to leave it (60-64 years), 

2) mortality, computed as the number of deaths occurring in the working-age population, and

3) net migration effects, calculated as a residual and corresponding to the estimated net migration for the population of working age.

While acknowledging the relevance of mortality in affecting the working-age population, we focus on the interplay between cohort turnover and migration effects, as these are more likely to be tackled by short-term policy interventions. Overall, between 2015 and 2019, 22.9 million young Europeans became part of the working-age population, while 26.6 million people reached (or were close to reaching) retirement age: this indicates a possible gap of around 3.8 million potential workers across the EU. Indeed, cohort turnover was negative in 86% of EU territories in that period. As shown in Figure 1, this happened throughout the EU, but particularly in Eastern and Central Eastern EU countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Romania), and Southern and South-Eastern EU countries (Croatia, Greece and Italy).

Although the working-age population shrank in most EU territories (63% of them), net migration was sufficient to counterbalance the deficit due to cohort turnover and generate an increase in the working-age population in 324 territories (27% of EU territories corresponding to 24% of the EU working-age population in 2019). They were mainly located in Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Belgium. 

Out-migration is stronger from rural areas 

On average, the working-age population decreased by 2.9% in rural areas and 1.1% in intermediate areas, but increased by 0.8% in urban areas. Looking at the geographical distribution, Figure 2 shows that positive changes in the working-age population were mostly limited to urban (144 territories) and intermediate (247 territories) areas, for instance in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, the Netherlands and Sweden. During the 2015-2019 period, few rural areas saw an increase in their working-age populations (34 territories) and most were located in Sweden.

Although ageing affected almost all EU territories, cohort turnover effects mainly drove the decrease in working-age population in rural areas when compared to urban ones (-1.9% and -0.7% respectively). Conversely, net migration effects appeared to contribute more substantially to the size of the working-age population in urban and intermediate areas (+2.4%, and +1.4% respectively) than in rural areas (+0.4%). In short, positive net migration “ protected” urban and intermediate areas more than rural areas from further shrinkages of the labour supply.

Challenges and opportunities

Between 2015 and 2019, migration was the underlying force in the evolution of the working-age population at a fine territorial level. Although covering a limited period, our research highlights the challenges currently facing many areas, predominately rural ones, confronted with a declining working-age population due to the combination of both negative net migration and cohort effects. 

Revitalising depopulating territories and breaking the cycle of rapid ageing is a priority on the agenda of many local and national authorities (and of the European Commission). Loss of working-age population, weaker economic development and stagnation of employment are the expected consequences, calling for the urgent adoption of structural actions. Policy responses should be based on scientific evidence, pointing to the opportunities that these territories offer in terms of quality of life. For instance, less densely populated areas attracted many people (including families with young children) during the recent COVID-19 lock-downs. The adoption of teleworking increased considerably during the pandemic, making physical distance from the workplace less significant. This contributed to the “counter-urbanizationˮ movement (from urban to rural areas for permanent resettlement) observed in several countries in recent years. Furthermore, new employment opportunities, in particular in the personal services and health care sectors (Grubanov Boskovic et al. 2021) could attract a younger working-age population to the territories where ageing and depopulation are currently most severe. 

References

Ghio D., Goujon A., Natale F., 2022, Assessing the demographic impact of migration on the working age population across European territories. Demographic Research 46(9): 261–272. doi :10.4054/DemRes.2022.46.9

Grubanov Boskovic S., Ghio D., Goujon A., Kalantaryan S., Belmonte M., Scipioni M., Conte A.,Gómez-González E., Gómez E., Tolan S., Martínez-Plumed F., Pesole A., Fernández-Macías E., Hernández-Orallo J. 2021, Health and long-term care workforce: demographic challenges and the potential contribution of migration and digital technology, EUR 30593 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, ISBN 978-92-76-30233-9, doi:10.2760/33427, JRC121698

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The future pace of fertility decline in Sub-Saharan Africa will likely be the chief determinant of world population growth, with massive implications for Africa itself as well as the rest of the world. Sub-Saharan Africa stands out as the world’s last region to enter the demographic transition. It was only in the 1980s that birth rates started to fall in most Sub-Saharan African countries, and still, these declines have been uneven and have stalled at times. Particularly in the late 1990s and early 2000s many of these countries experienced a slowdown of their fertility decline and in some cases even a reversal, the reasons for which have remained largely unexplained (Kebede, Goujon, Lutz 2019). Most existing studies try to link stalls in fertility decline to some specific factors, such as slower socio-economic development (Shapiro and Gebreselassie 2008), the low priority assigned to family planning programs at the beginning of the 21st century (Bongaarts 2008) and other factors related to public and reproductive health.

Fertility stalls echo earlier education stalls for some cohorts in sub-Saharan Africa

In contrast to the above-mentioned explanations, Goujon, Lutz and Kc (2015) proposed another plausible explanation focusing on cohort effects. They linked the fertility stalls around 2000 to the fact that some cohorts of women were subjected to an education stall, possibly associated with post-independence economic and political turmoil as well as structural adjustment. To explore this hypothesis, we combined individual level data from Demographic and Health Surveys for 18 African countries – with and without fertility stalls – thus creating a pooled dataset of more than 2 million births to some 670,000 women born between 1950 and 1995 by level of education. Our results highlighted that disruptions in educational attainment among cohorts around the 1980s are consistent with populations having higher proportions of poorly educated women of childbearing ages in the late 1990s and early 2000s, than would otherwise have been the case, had educational improvements continued to progress. This phenomenon, coupled with the relatively higher vulnerability of less educated women to period effects, has likely contributed to stalls in the period fertility declines (Kebede, Goujon and Lutz 2019).

A two-decade delay, linking changes in education with fertility

The post-independence period was a time of great expectations in Sub-Saharan Africa as most countries engaged in a process of expanding social services (Ezenwe 1993). However, the initial period of economic and social optimism was soon replaced by harsher times linked to the external shocks of oil price increases, declining terms of trade, and increasing government external debt (Elbadawi, Ghura and Uwujaren 1992). These changes resulted in austerity measures and massive cuts in government budgets – particularly in the social sectors of health and education – which were mostly in the framework of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) introduced in Africa by the Bretton Woods institutions. While it is impossible to say whether the SAP or initial dire situations are behind the slow-down in cohort educational improvement, the children of the 1980s were deprived of educational opportunities, with life-long consequences.

Figure 1 displays the proportions of women who never attended school from the cohorts born between 1950 and 1990 in two populous countries with stalls in their fertility declines (Kenya and Nigeria),. In both countries, the clear trend towards a declining cohort birth rate from 1950 to the 1970s was stopped (Nigeria) or even reversed (Kenya; Figure 2). Such education discontinuities were also observed in most other countries with fertility stalls.

The fertility stalls in Sub-Saharan Africa have rarely, if ever, been linked to the slowdown in educational progress. Indeed, the two phenomena occurred almost two decades apart, which may have seemed too long for any direct causal effects. However, they may be linked by two mechanisms. First, given that education has a direct effect on lowering fertility, the cohorts of girls who were deprived of schooling had higher fertility than they would otherwise have had. Second, period effects on uneducated women around 2000 were more sizable because these women were more numerous than they would have been without the earlier education disruptions.

To assess the combined effect of these two different forces, we compared actual fertility trends with a counterfactual, i.e., a hypothetical scenario of what would have happened without this educational stall. This scenario (blue dotted line) refers both to the proportion of women with no formal education (Figure 1) and to the period total fertility rate (Figure 2). The difference between the counterfactual TFRs and the observed ones lies only in the weights given to the three educational groups (no formal education, incomplete primary, and completed primary education or more).

Our simulation results show a sizable difference between the actual and counterfactual TFR around the year 2000 in the stalled-fertility countries. In absolute numbers for all ten stalled-fertility countries, between 1995 and 2010, this translates into about 13 million fewer births to women aged 15-34. For Nigeria alone, the difference is about 6.5 million births.

Conclusions and policy implications

The delayed consequences of educational disruptions on fertility levels two decades later have gone largely unnoticed in the scientific literature about Sub-Saharan Africa. An under-appreciation of this connection – between girls’ education and fertility in the following years – could be ruinous for the societies in question, as they attempt to maintain their living standards amid growing demands from prolonged rapid population increases. Shifts toward sustainable fertility and development depend on the reliable expansion of quality education, and accordingly, all relevant initiatives should embrace this as a priority.

References

Bongaarts J (2008) Fertility transitions in developing countries: Progress or stagnation? Studies in family planning, 39(2):105–110.

Elbadawi IA, Ghura D, Uwujaren G (1992) World Bank adjustment lending and economic performance in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s. Country Economics Department WPS, 1000.

Ezenwe U (1993) The African debt crisis and the challenge of development. Intereconomics, 28(1):35–43.

Goujon A, Lutz W, Kc S (2015) Education stalls and subsequent stalls in African fertility: A descriptive overview. Demographic Research, 33:1281–1296.

Kebede E, Goujon A, Lutz W (2019) Stalls in Africa’s fertility decline partly result from disruptions in female education. PNAS, Jan 30;201717288.

Shapiro D, Gebreselassie T (2008) Fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa: falling and stalling. African Population Studies, 23(1).

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