The population of Europe: yesterday and today

At the beginning of our era, Europe was, according to modernstandards, a fairly sparsely populated continent. And this despite the fact that some of its countries, especially Greece and the Roman Empire, were the center of world civilization, culture and science.

The population of Europe has been growing for a long timeslowly, to which the blame was endless wars, a short life expectancy and a high infant mortality rate. Of course, the level of medicine of those times was generally not very high, in addition, the services of qualified doctors, as a rule, were available primarily to wealthy people, which contributed to the overall picture.

Scientists were able to calculate the demographic dataEuropean continent 2-3 thousand years ago. According to this information, on this continent by the year 400 BC lived about 19 million people. In 200 years, this figure increased by only 11 million. Thus, at that time, the growth was only 5-6 million people per century. At the time of Christ's birth, the population of Europe reached 42,000,000. During the heyday of the power of the Roman Empire, this growth slows down. And by the time of the collapse of this state, the continent is experiencing a demographic catastrophe associated with the decline of the population, in no small part due to brutal wars. The population of Europe in those times gradually declined. The situation stabilized only two centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. Since then, demography has been slow but steady growth.

In the nineteenth century, the population of Europe,despite all the socio-economic problems characteristic of that time, almost doubled, reaching 383 million by the end of the century (against 195 million at the beginning of the century). His growth was slowed by demographic losses in the terrible meat grinder of the First World War, after which the continent was struck by the Spanish epidemic, which worldwide took lives from 50,000,000 to 90,000,000 people.

Over the next 20 years, the continent continued toDemographic growth, which gave the mainland another 70 million people. He slowed down because of the huge human losses in World War II. But after a while, in the 60's, the so-called "baby boom" began. This coincided with the time of revision of traditional values. However, already in the seventies the birth rate began to decline sharply. And in the 90's, in almost all European countries, mortality began to exceed the birth rate. However, life expectancy did not cease to increase.

Now the population of foreign Europe isapproximately 830 million people. And in almost all of its countries, the birth rate is much lower than the level of natural reproduction. The number of marriages is decreasing, and the number of divorces is steadily growing. Children are increasingly being born out of wedlock, and in some countries (Estonia, Scandinavian countries, eastern Germany), the number of "fatherless" - at least half of all newborns.

What sways the level of fertility, then only inAlbania, Ireland and Iceland, this indicator still stands at the level of population reproduction. In other countries, each woman, on average, gives birth to fewer than two children. Its role here is played by the rejection of traditional values ​​and the principle of "first career - then family". In general, the indigenous population of Europe is dying out, and this process, according to experts, can not be stopped. Therefore, these demographic losses are compensated for by immigration from "non-white" countries. Most of the "new Europeans" are Muslims from the Maghreb, Africa, the Arab States and Turkey. Many believe that through this massive immigration, Europe in the middle of this century will become an Islamic continent. This view is justified by statistical data, because in general Muslim women give birth to many more children than German women, English women or French women. Therefore, in the next few decades Europe will be a completely different continent.