Dramatic Demographic Changes

Since 1980, a new chapter opened in the demographic history of Europe. As Massimo Livi-Bacci suggests, five main phenomena deserve special attention: the decline of mortality; the decline of birth rates to below replacement levels; the rapid aging of the population; the end of mass emigration and the beginning of immigration; and last, changes in social rules and behavior (marriage customs, family structures).

Indeed, the mortality rate declined to ten deaths per 1,000 at the end of the twentieth century. The decline of infant mortality played an important part in this change. At the turn of the century, only eight to ten infants died per 1,000 live births.

These changes were the culmination of a permanent demographic trend, which gradually accelerated in three distinct, two- to three-decade periods of the twentieth century: the quarter-century interwar period, a quarter-century post-World War II period, and the two to three decades ending at the turn of the twenty-first century. In the end, death rates dropped to one-third and infant mortality to less than one-tenth of the early twentieth-century level. Moreover, the regional differences within Europe, which were significant even in the mid-twentieth century, virtually disappeared.

The new developments were largely the outcome of improvements in health care, the “therapeutic revolution” of the later part of the century. This was also closely connected to the rise of the welfare state in both halves of the continent, which guaranteed full health insurance for all citizens.