Fewer workers to support greater number of retirees

When Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld recently disparaged France and Germany as "Old Europe," maybe he was speaking demographically. According to a new study of the European Union's 15 member nations, governments there are facing an age problem that is almost certain to get worse. European families are having fewer children, and are exacerbating the problem by delaying child-bearing. As a result, the research team said, Europeans face higher health and welfare costs, fewer wage-earners, and an impact on national productivity. In other words, a downward spiral has begun, and soon fewer young workers will be supporting more and more old retirees. Although their calculations predict a slight population rise over the next 15 years - the result of a "baby boom" in the 1960s - the researchers see Europe having 88 million fewer people when the year 2100 rolls around, down from about 230 million. One of the researchers, Brian O'Neill at Brown University in Providence, R.I., said the data show "there are fewer children today than there are parents" in the European Union. "So we know the number of parents one generation in the future is going to be even smaller. "Then there is the additional factor of delay," which accounts for about 40 percent of the expected decline, he said. Europe has about four working-age persons for every elderly person, the researchers said. But they predict that there "will be considerably less than three" workers per retiree for most of this century, even if young families begin having children sooner.