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Eurasia
April 26, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 17
Eurasia’s burgeoning populations to overtake a vanishing population in Eastern Europe
Clare Nuttall in Glasgow
Emerging Europe is facing a demographic crisis. Half a dozen countries in Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe is set to lose two out of five of its citizens by the end of this century and a few counties will lose half their population, as the 90s demographic dip hits the population curve across the entire region.
Fast population growth in Central Asia combined with dwindling populations in Central, Southeast and Eastern Europe will see the Eurasian nations outstrip other parts of the post-communist space before the end of this century — in population terms at least.
This has knock on effects for their relative eco- nomic performance as well. Hampered by bureau- cracy and corruption, the Eurasian countries will struggle to mobilise their burgeoning populations to create solid economic gains, but at the same time population decline, especially of working age groups, is already becoming a serious constraint on growth in Central and Southeast Europe.
To get an idea of the scale of the seismic population changes coming up in the next few decades, long-term forecasts compiled by the UN show that no less than six East European nations — Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Moldova and Poland — are set to loose 40% or more of their populations by the end of this century.
Every country in Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe will lose a substantial share of their populations to a combination of emigration and natural decline, with the share ranging from 52%
Where are all the people? Populations in Central Europe are disappearing while those in Eurasia are ballooning
in Moldova, the world’s fastest shrinking country, to Russia, where it will fall by just 14%.
Russia is a bit of an anomaly. It has experienced a natural population decline and is by far the largest economy that spans the Eastern Europe and Eurasia region, but it has also received large numbers of immigrants, mainly from the post- Communist states such as Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Moldova, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. As other East European countries get overtaken in population terms by Central Asian states, Russia is projected to maintain the largest population in the region, though it is still expected to drop from 144mn in 2017 to 124mn in 2100.
By contrast, the populations of the majority Muslim states of Central Asia, plus Mongolia, are set to rise considerably by the end of this century, with the fastest growth anticipated in the wider region’s least developed economy Tajikistan, where the population will more than double over the next 81 years.
In 2017, the total population of the eastern EU member states amounted to 103.1mn, consider- ably higher than the 74.8mn in Central Asia and Mongolia. By the end of this century those figures will be turned on their head, with Central Asia and Mongolia having a combined population of 85.6mn, over 20mn higher than the eastern EU member states, which by that time will have seen their populations shrink to just 64.4mn.
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