page_title: Generation Alpha
section_title: Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Generation Alpha / Demographics / Europe
caption_attribution_description: English: The population pyramid of the United Kingdom illustrates the age and sex structure of population and may provide insights about political and social stability, as well as economic development. The population is distributed along the horizontal axis, with males shown on the left and females on the right. The male and female populations are broken down into 5-year age groups represented as horizontal bars along the vertical axis, with the youngest age groups at the bottom and the oldest at the top. The shape of the population pyramid gradually evolves over time based on fertility, mortality, and international migration trends.
context_page_description: Generation Alpha is the demographic cohort succeeding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 2010s as the starting birth years and the mid-2020s as the ending birth years. Named after the first letter in the Greek alphabet, Generation Alpha is the first to be born entirely in the 21st century. Most members of Generation Alpha are the children of Millennials.
context_section_description: In 2018, 19.70% of the population the European Union as a whole was at least 65 years old. The median age of all 28 members of the bloc, including the United Kingdom which recently decided to leave, was 43 years in 2019. It was about 29 in the 1950s, when there were just six members: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Like all other inhabited continents, Europe saw significant population growth in the late twentieth century. However, Europe's growth is projected to halt by the early 2020s due to falling fertility rates and an aging population. In 2015, a woman living in the European Union had on average 1.5 children, down from 2.6 in 1960. Although the E.U. continues to experience a net influx of immigrants, this is not enough to balance out the low fertility rates. In 2017, the median age was 53.1 years in Monaco, 45 in Germany and Italy, 43 in Greece, Bulgaria, and Portugal, making them some of the oldest countries in the world besides Japan and Bermuda. They are followed by Austria, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Spain, whose median age was 43.
  Italy's fertility rate dropped from about four in the 1960s down to 1.2 in the 2010s. This is not because young Italians do not want to procreate. Quite the contrary, having a lot of children is an Italian ideal. But its economy has been floundering since the Great Recession of 2007–8, with the youth unemployment rate at a staggering 35% in 2019. Many Italians have moved abroad – 150,000 did in 2018 – and many are young people pursuing educational and economic opportunities. With the plunge in the number of births each year, the Italian population is expected to decline in the next five years. The Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) reported that the number of babies born in 2018 in Italy was the lowest since the unification of Italy in 1861. Moreover, the Baby Boomers are retiring in large numbers, and their numbers eclipse those of the young people taking care of them. Only Japan has an age structure more tilted towards the elderly. In 2018, 23% of the Italian population was above the age of 65, compared to 27% for Japan. One possible solution to this problem is incentivizing reproduction, as France has done, by investing in longer parental leaves, daycare, and tax exemptions for parents. As of 2019, France has approximately the same population as Italy but 65% more births. In 2015, Italy introduced a cash handout of €800 per couple per child. This does not seem to have had an impact in the long run. People may choose to have a child earlier, but ultimately, this does not increase the nation's fertility rate. This pattern has also been observed in other countries, family study expert Anne Gauthier of the University of Groningen told the BBC. In Italy's case, the subsidy does not address economic concerns or social attitudes. Another solution is immigration, which has been alleviating the decline, but it does not come without political backlash.
  Greece's serious demographic problem comes as a result of economic hardship which has prompted many young people are leaving the country in search of better opportunities elsewhere. Between 2009 and 2018, about half a million people left the country, many of them of child-bearing age. In 2010, 115,000 children were born; that number dropped to 92,000 in 2015, and then to below 89,000 in 2017, the lowest on record. In 2019, the fertility rate fell to just 1.3 per woman, well below the replacement level and one of the lowest in Europe. Some of the more remote regions of Greece suffer from shortages of obstetricians and gynecologists, many of whom have gone abroad, which deters would-be parents. And there are primary school students who are the only child of their village and whose parents are in their 40s. In general, the Greeks are having children later and having fewer children in the 2010s compared to the 1980s. This brain drain and a rapidly aging population could spell disaster for the country.
  The Spanish National Institute of Statistics reported that the number of babies born 
caption: Population pyramid of the United Kingdom in 2018
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