来源：《卫报》
刊登日期：2021年5月16日
Europe’s baby deficit is becoming impossible to ignore. In Rome on Friday, Italy’s prime minister, Mario Draghi, and Pope Francis were the star attendees at a special conference to discuss the country’s declining birthrate. According to latest figures, 2020 saw the lowest number of births recorded since Italian unification in 1861. Spain is ageing at a similar pace, as is much of eastern Europe. In Britain, it is the same story. The Centre for Population Change recently predicted a post-pandemic decline in annual births, deepening a secular trend that has already taken the birthrate to “historically low levels”.
欧洲的婴儿短缺问题正变得不容忽视。上周五在罗马，意大利总理马里奥·德拉吉和教皇方济各出席了一个讨论该国不断下降的出生率的特别会议。根据最新数据，2020年的出生人数是1861年意大利统一以来最低的。西班牙正以类似的速度老龄化，东欧的许多国家也是如此。在英国，情况也是一样。人口变化中心最近预测，大流行后的年出生人数将出现下降，这将进一步深化已使出生率降至“历史最低水平”的长期趋势。
The social implications of declining birthrate are many and various. The number of European over-65s will have grown by over 40% by 2050. Fewer people will be in work paying taxes when their pension and care bills arrive. Immigration seems likely to continue to be a structural necessity in western democracies, as well as a source of innovation and renewal.
出生率下降对社会的影响是多方面的。到2050年，65岁以上的欧洲人将增长40%以上。当养老金和医疗账单到来时，交税的人将会减少。在西方民主国家，移民似乎仍将是一种结构性需求，也是创新和复兴的源泉。
But this is about more than the big picture. For many young people, parenthood is being delayed out of economic necessity. Since the 1960s, declining western birthrates have been partly a result of greater freedom for women to shape and control their own lives. But starting a family should be a far easier option than it has become. Even in Scandinavia, rightly held up as a model when it comes to parental leave and accessible childcare, alarm bells are ringing. In Sweden, the annual number of births has consistently fallen for over a decade, constituting a new and worrying trend according to the country’s leading demographers.
但这不仅仅关乎大局。对许多年轻人来说，由于经济原因，他们推迟了生育。自上世纪60年代以来，西方国家出生率的下降，在一定程度上是因为女性在塑造和控制自己生活方面拥有了更大的自由。但是组建家庭本应该是一个比现在容易得多的选择。即使是在被公认为育儿假和儿童保育典范的北欧，警钟也在敲响。据瑞典主要人口统计学家称，十多年来，瑞典每年的出生人数一直在下降，这构成了一个令人担忧的新趋势。
In Britain, family-friendly policies were swept away. Simply catching up with Scandinavian norms would represent progress for women struggling to combine work and motherhood. But an age of widespread economic insecurity among the young – above all in relation to housing and jobs – also requires a broader response. For many under-35s, a combination of debt, stagnant wages and insecure work make starting a family seem like a risk, rather than a natural step. In Britain especially, for the millions of private renters unable to get on the housing ladder, a lack of assets compounds the problem.
在英国，有利于家庭的政策被废除了。对于努力兼顾工作和母亲身份的女性来说，仅仅是赶上北欧的标准就代表着进步。但是，一个年轻人普遍缺乏经济安全感的时代——尤其是在住房和工作方面——也需要更广泛的应对措施。对于许多35岁以下的人来说，债务、停滞不前的工资和不稳定的工作使成家看起来像是一种风险，而不是一个自然而然的人生步骤。尤其是在英国，数以百万计的租房者买不起房子，没有资产使生育意愿更低。
At the beginning of the pandemic, it was speculated, that the confinement of lockdown would lead to a baby boom. Amid acute anxiety about the future, the opposite occurred. Birthrates tend to go upwards during good times, not bad ones. A vaccine bounce in reopening economies may confirm that rule of thumb in the short term. But there is no escaping the underlying pre-Covid reality that too few babies are being born. Without a new deal for young would-be parents, a demographic crisis looms.
在大流行之初，有人猜测封锁将导致婴儿潮。在对未来的极度焦虑中，相反的情况发生了。出生率往往在经济景气时上升，而不是在经济不景气时。接种疫苗经济重新开放带来的反弹可能会在短期内证实这一经验法则。但我们无法逃避新冠病毒出现前的潜在现实，即出生的婴儿太少。如果没有一项针对年轻准父母的新政，人口危机就迫在眉睫。