How the war in Ukraine is changing Europe’s demography

BEFORE VLADIMIR PUTIN invaded Ukraine on February 24th, many Europeans fretted that their region was getting older and that more people were dying than being born. Europe’s median age of 43 is nearly four years older than that of North America, the next-greyest region. The population of the European Union is expected to peak at just shy of 450m within the next few years, then dip below 424m by 2070. The prospect of dwindling numbers frightens many. It has been especially scary for the formerly communist countries of eastern Europe, where outmigration has compounded the effects of below-replacement birth rates. Andrej Plenkovic, Croatia’s prime minister, called declining population “an almost existential problem for some nations”. Demographic change is Europe’s “third key transition”, alongside the green and digital ones, says Dubravka Suica, the vice-president of the European Commission for demography and democracy, a post created in 2019.

Among its many shocks, Mr Putin’s war has delivered one of a particular kind to demographers, who tend to see the phenomenon they study as slow-moving. Some 5.3m people—the bulk of them women and children—have fled Ukraine since the war began, the vast majority to countries bordering Ukraine on the west. Poland, which until recently exported more people than it received, has taken in more than half of these. The population of Warsaw, the capital, expanded by 17% in weeks. Hungary, whose population had shrunk from 10.7m in the mid-1980s to 9.8m in 2020, has received more than 500,000 Ukrainians.