Population Change Forecast by the EU and OECD: a Critical Assessment
“Scientific Problems of Engineering Economics of Construction and Real Estate Management, Regions and Territories Development (ICEREE’2019)” organized within 60th International Scientific Conference of Riga Technical University: Book of Abstracts 2019
Jānis Vanags, Ineta Geipele, Ņina Linde

The population is the socio-political and economic basis of each country. Evidence for this idea can be found in the history of civilization development. At the beginning of the 21st century, Latvia, other Baltic States and the EU have been facing the threats posed by civilization itself for several centuries. The most important threats are air, water and land pollution and its increase, the annual average temperature rise, the sharp difference in income between rich and the least developed countries, and the over-concentration of the world wealth in the hands of a small section of the population. In the social economy, population stratification and climate change are the major causes of migration in the world. In these circumstances, it is important to “look” into the future in order to better identify current threats and potential changes, as well as their performance over time. Probably being driven by their best intentions, the EU statisticians have produced population projections for the current EU countries up to 2080. From a scientific point of view, it should be seen as an important and bold step to look over several decades to understand what changes in the population will take place today as a result of the identified and unknown threats. The study focuses on Latvia and the other Baltic States, as well as on Northern European countries. Table below provides the EU forecast data. Examining the results of the EU and OECD forecasts by the Scandinavian countries, significantly larger deviations have been revealed. The largest discrepancy is observed in Finland’s population projections up to 1.9 % for 2030, followed by Denmark – 1.56 times and Norway with 28.7 %. Taking into account the conservative nature of population changes, especially in economically developed countries and their location in Northern Europe, where the threat of global climate change is significantly lower than in Central Europe and Southern Europe, such deviations between forecasts would not be acceptable. It means that one of the forecasts or both cannot be considered scientifically satisfactory and, without appropriate adjustments, they cannot be used in other scientific studies and/or development planning of the organisation of the countries concerned without the corresponding adjustments. In addition, adjustments need to be accompanied with assumptions and constraints related to the threats and opportunities affecting population change. In addition, the projections for population change in the Baltic States made by the EU up to 2080 threaten the preservation of their existing national identity due to the small size of their population, creating a threat of socio-national conflict in the European Union. To a greater extent, this applies to Latvia and Lithuania; therefore, politicians in these countries and the EU should focus on these issues in order to develop and implement concrete and sufficiently effective measures to preserve basic population in the Baltic States and reduce social conflicts, thus strengthening the EU socio-economic foundations.


Atslēgas vārdi
Population projections; Population forecast; Baltic States; Scandinavian states.
Hipersaite
http://buni.rtu.lv/wp-content/uploads/sites/68/2019/09/ICEREE-2019-Abstracts.pdf

Vanags, J., Geipele, I., Linde, Ņ. Population Change Forecast by the EU and OECD: a Critical Assessment. No: “Scientific Problems of Engineering Economics of Construction and Real Estate Management, Regions and Territories Development (ICEREE’2019)” organized within 60th International Scientific Conference of Riga Technical University: Book of Abstracts, Riga, 27.-28. septembris, 2019. Riga: RTU Press, 2019, 51.-53.lpp. ISBN 978-9934-22-369-3.

Publikācijas valoda
English (en)
RTU Zinātniskā bibliotēka.
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