Excerpt:
Europe's population is shrinking and aging so much so fast that a major decline in European living standards is now statistically inevitable within the next 15 years, according to data contained in a publication titled "The EU in the World: A Statistical Portrait." The 113-page report — published by the European Union's official statistics agency known as Eurostat — shows that Europeans increasingly are relegating themselves to the global margins, as their relative share of global wealth and trade shrinks. The main culprit is the refusal by Europeans to produce more children.
Eurostat estimates that the world's population reached 6.9 billion people at the beginning of 2010. Asia accounts for more than 60 percent of the total (China, 20 percent and India, 18 percent). By contrast, the European Union's 500 million people account for 7 percent of the world's total population, and the United States with its 320 million inhabitants currently makes up 5 percent of the world total.
But the Eurostat data also show that while the world's population increased by more than 130 percent since 1960, Europe's population increased by only 25 percent during that same period, and will peak in 2025 before embarking on a permanent downward trajectory. By comparison, the U.S. population increased by 70 percent over the past 50 years and is expected to continue growing at a healthy pace well beyond 2050.