EU’s population decreases partly due to COVID-19, latest figures show

The European Union’s inhabitants is lowering, the most recent official figures present.

In keeping with Eurostat’s annual Demography of Europe report launched on Thursday, the variety of individuals residing within the 27-country bloc fell by 278,000 within the 12 months to 1 January, 2021, to achieve 447.2 million.

The autumn in inhabitants comes after practically 20 years of development. In 2001, there have been 429 million individuals throughout the Union.

The pure inhabitants change — the distinction between dwell births and deaths — tanked in 2020 to -2.5. That is probably because of COVID-19 because the pandemic has to this point formally claimed the lives of about 1.09 million individuals throughout the EU.

However the pure inhabitants change within the bloc has truly been destructive since 2012 as fewer dwell infants get born — the speed has gone from 10.2 dwell births per 1,000 inhabitants in 2001 to 9.1 — whereas the loss of life fee has elevated over the identical interval.

Individuals over the age of 65 now make up a fifth of the bloc’s inhabitants, whereas the variety of these aged 80 and over has doubled over the previous 20 years from 3% in 2001 to six%. In the meantime, the variety of individuals beneath the age of 19 decreased from 23% in 2001 to twenty% in 2021.

Eurostat’s information additionally reveals that there are about 5% extra girls than males and that the ratio is especially skewed within the Baltics. The feminine populations in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are 16%, 13% and 10% increased than the boys’s respectively.

There are, nevertheless, member states that rely extra males than girls. These are Malta, Luxembourg, Sweden and Slovenia.

Ladies additionally dwell on common 5.6 years longer than males. Provisional information for 2021 places the life expectancy at start at 82.8 years for ladies and 77.2 years for males.

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