As illustrated in Figure 2, the distribution of migrants by country of origin varies considerably across individual EU countries: Austria, United Kingdom, and France have the largest proportion of migrant population born outside the EU, followed by Sweden and Belgium. At the other end of the spectrum, countries where migrants from other EU countries constitute a sizeable share of the population include Ireland (over 8 percent), Belgium (6 percent), Sweden and Austria (around 5 percent). Ireland and Slovakia are the only EU countries where the number of migrants born in other EU countries exceeds the number of migrants from outside the EU.<sup>7</sup>

# **3. PROFILE OF THE EU MIGRANT POPULATION**

**Age and Demographic Composition:** Countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are experiencing rapidly aging populations, a phenomenon posing significant economic and social challenges due to rising health care expenditures and public pension payments to the elderly.<sup>8</sup> EU countries are no different in this respect, in that a rapid shift is currently underway in the age structure of their populations: presently every sixth EU citizen is over 65 years of age; this share is projected to rise to one-fifth by 2020, and as high as one-fourth to one-third by 2050.<sup>9</sup> While mass immigration may not be a viable policy tool to reverse the trend of the aging EU population, it is nonetheless informative to compare the demographic composition of EU migrant and non-migrant groups. The 2006 EU-SILC data clearly illustrate the aging challenge confronting both EU4 and E13 countries: 29 percent and 35 percent respectively of the native-born populations aged 16+ years are 56 years or older in these country groups (Table 3). Non-citizens born outside the EU (i.e. group 4) help raise the stock of working-age population in both EU13 and EU4 countries, with more than four-fifths (88 percent and 92 percent respectively) falling in the 16-55 yr age groups.

**Table 3: Breakdown of the Population by Age Group**

|||**Native-born**<br>**Population**|**1.**<br>**Citizens born**<br>**in other**<br>**EU countries**|**2.**<br>**Citizens born**<br>**outside the**<br>**EU**|**3.**<br>**Non-citizens**<br>**from other EU**<br>**countries**|**4.**<br>**Non-citizens**<br>**born outside**<br>**the EU**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|**EU 13**|||||||
||16-20 years|6|4|4|2|5|
||21-55 years|59|52|65|64|83|
||56+ years|35|44|31|34|12|
||Total|100|100|100|100|100|
|**EU 4**|||||||
||16-20 years|7|1|2|6|4|
||21-55 years|63|26|25|69|88|
||56+ years|29|73|73|25|9|
||Total|100|100|100|100|100|

 In **Austria** and **Belgium,** citizens born outside the EU as well as all non-citizen migrants (i.e. groups 2-4) tend to be younger than the rest of the population (Annex Table 11).

> 7 Given the small number of observations in some cells of Table 2 (and therefore relatively large standard errors of the resultant estimates), the remainder of the paper presents country-level breakdowns for the larger EU countries only.

> 8 See Chawla, M. Gordon Betcherman, and Arup Banerji (2007): From Red to Gray: The Third Transition of Aging Populations in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, World Bank, Washington DC.

> 9 “Economic Migration, Social Cohesion and Development: Towards and Integrated Approach”. Thematic report prepared for the 8th Council of Europe Conference of Ministers Responsible for Migration Affairs, Kyiv, September 2008.

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