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10 I Companies & Markets bne May 2019
Where are all the people? Populations in Central Europe are disappearing while those in Eurasia are ballooning.
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 are set to lose two out of five of their 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 economic performance as well. Hampered by bureaucracy 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
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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% 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 popu- lation 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