Ireland is interesting. It's long been the sick man in terms of population growth since 1845 up until the late 1980s and now is the odd man out in Europe as being one of the few countries that can grow its population.
Ireland has had a recession since 2008 but ended last year with a return to slow growth and during this time had high unemployment and high emigration. It's expected to be the fastest growing European economy by far over the next 12 months. Still Irelands prosperity, high minimum wage and generous welfare benefits are attracting immigration from Eastern Europe and North Africa in particular. This compounded with Irelands high fertility rate accentuates her population growth above her neighbours.
These trends are expected to continue even as Europe exits recession and returns to growth.
The images surprised me though - it suggests all of Ireland is growing somewhat evenly when the truth is that while most if is growing Dublin and her surrounding area and Cork are growing much faster than the rest and the picture doesn't indicate that though I'm sure the data will.
> It's long been the sick man in terms of population growth since 1845
That reminds me of a section from the book "1493", discussing the introduction of the potato to Europe and later the potato-famine:
> Today Ireland has the melancholy distinction of being the only nation in Europe, and perhaps the world, to have fewer people within the same boundaries than it did more than 150 years ago.
The Famine made Ireland "Irish" in the sense that we understand it today. The famine caused people to become more pious in their Catholicism, even more impoverished and detest the British even more than what they previously did. It probably was the single most important factor in shaping modern Ireland.
Many here are probably aware that Ireland had in 1845 a population of 9 Million but only 6 Million today (all Island pop). The entirety of the UK at the time had a population of 22 Million people. This means the Britain (Scotland, England and Wales) was only 25% bigger than Ireland at that time which is completely different today with the UK having >60 Million people and Ireland (Republic) having 4.5 Million. Ireland had a similar agricultural output compared to Britain which is at least three time larger.
If the famine didn't happen Ireland could easily have a population of over 30 Million. However it did happen and alternate realities are hard to predict.
> If the famine didn't happen Ireland could easily have a population of over 30 Million. However it did happen and alternate realities are hard to predict.
In a way it has, there are that many with Irish ancestry in America, not strange as emigration there cost Ireland much more people than the famine.
It would need a larger city to make that happen though - Dublin is an order of magnitude smaller than London. Now a x10 scaling of Dublin would be interesting though.
England has forests, nature reserves, fjords elsewhere. That's why this region can be so dense?
Why would you want to build up everything? Where's the gain I wonder?
If Ireland had the population density of the Netherlands, they'd have 34m people. (Ireland ~73.5/km^2 density and ~84k km^2 area; Netherlands 407/km^2 density and ~41k km^2 area).
For reference Bangladesh sits at just above 1000/km^2 density.
Nine million on Ireland in 1845?! They tell us the famine was caused by monoculture; they tell us it was a fungus; they tell us it was English land and farm policy; they tell us it was inequality; they tell us it was import quotas.
But they never mention that Ireland was horribly overcrowded. Nine million is jam packed horror.
At six million today, Ireland should be closed to immigration and paying naturalized Eastern Europeans and North Africans to give up citizenship and leave. Even six million is dangerously overpopulated. Thirty million is pure nightmare.
Really? Ireland has 13% of the population density of England, and around 1% of the population density of Greater London, both of which are keeping their heads above water just fine.
England and similarly dense countries like Bengala-Desh are horribly overcrowded. The locals are desperate to send home immigrants and refuse even to replace themselves by having enough babies.
And that's after concentrating a large population in Europe's largest city so that they can at least have a little open space elsewhere.
You're talking about a country so insanely crowded that they actually manufacture land out of the sea just to squeeze themselves in. In fact, they're famous for it because it's so awful and crazy.
There's significant danger that rising oceans and a major storm could kill millions. That sounds like horror to just about everyone.
And Netherlands has adjacent countries not so dense as itself with forests and open space to adjourn to on weekends for sanity. Ireland is an island.
> t suggests all of Ireland is growing somewhat evenly when the truth is that while most if is growing Dublin and her surrounding area and Cork are growing much faster than the rest and the picture doesn't indicate that though I'm sure the data will.
As far as I could tell, the darkest red colour represents '> 2% population growth,' so that graphic is not much good at breaking down areas that are all experiencing more than 2% growth.
"Scotland’s Northeast shows remarkable population gains, a likely result of the North Sea oil industry concentrated in Aberdeen."
I think you can probably explain the two red blobs near Aberdeen on oil and the wealth it has brought to that area but at least one of the other red blobs further west must be the Aviemore/Strathspey area which has become incredibly popular for outdoor sports and general high quality of life.
Amusingly, although Aviemore is described as a "boom town" it's population only grew by 36% in the decade to 2011 adding an extra 956 people :-)
There are some really interesting things on that map. The apparent huge influx of people into France and the UK is one. Another amazing thing is that after what I think is around $1 trillion dollars spent in former east German states post reunification, the outflow of people still looks to be strong.
As you know, you can't tell that from this picture. An area that has had large annual population decreases for the first 5 years, and slower growth for the second 5 will still show up as red.
Also, quite a bit of the population decreases in the countryside will be of people moving into the cities.
Because of differences in population density, that can give the impression of population decline where there is none.
Looking at Germany, for me the picture 'confirms' that their population is shrinking (no growth in the west, apparent decrease in the east) that makes the strong growth of their economy in the past years even more of a miracle.
Why should the growth of economy be a miracle if the population is shrinking?
Mostly that's why the population is shrinking, people who live in the better economies, mostly have less kids, mostly due to the fact that they don't have the time and mostly working harder than others.
Also our economy grown mostly cause of the fact that our strong export got a huge increase since we had a european currency ("Deutsche Mark" or "DM" was just too good for the export market), while the Euro is / was way better since other countries brought it to a lower level.
If your population grows, you get some growth 'for free' in the sense that it doesn't require productivity to increase.
If the population shrinks, keeping the economy flat already requires productivity improvements. Growing it at a time where other economies with growing populations can't is a bit of a miracle. Those increased exports still have to be produced.
First, enter a monetary union with weaker economies with dubious credit, at a really advantageous rate for these economies but effectively substantially depressing the new Deutsche Mark.
Second, lend like crazy to these countries whilst markets believe Greek paper to have the same default risk as German.
Third, as the neighbouring countries are using the newly available borrowing and their strong new euros to go on a spending binge, provide the products.
With both guaranteed demand in Europe guaranteeing large volume, and an effective 40% discount on German exports vs where they should be with the Deutsche Mark, you can take market share from the Korean and Japanese let alone Americans and even avoid having your manufacturing sector destroyed by Chinese competition. In Europe it's even worse, VW thrives as Rover goes under.
The best part is that when Southern European credit finally catches up with where it should be trading, you get to brag about your wunderbar Mittelstand values and insult those pesky lazy Southerners, whilst reinforcing the very actions that guarantee you the continuation of de facto devaluation policies without being responsible for them (and therefore getting booted out of office by an angry German electorate annoyed at being underpaid on a global basis). Invisible tax FTW. Even those Germans who might have pieced it together will hesitate before putting any real pressure towards, say, a Grexit, because their pension fund is invested to the neck in Greek paper. Meinen Kinder will sort it out, but I arbeit so hard all my life, surely I deserve to enjoy my pension...
So, not a miracle, it is by design, a rather magnificent one too. One that, long term, seems to beat sending the Fallschirmjaeger on Kreta.
If you read some of the more nationalistic UK press, you would have expected the UK to be a much deeper red. Even the major connurbations don't seem to have seen as much change as I was expecting.
Isn't a lot of it due to greater urbanization? While the rural areas lose people, not only does Berlin grow but also Leipzig, Dresden, Magdeburg and Rostock.
I think the map show no major city in eastern Germany actually losing population.
Shows percent change... but not the magnitude of the change.
Seeing a map that combined both percentage and magnitude to compute the colors (perhaps similar to the Tf–idf calculation?) would be much more interpretable. 50% of people leaving the middle of a forest doesn't really tell me much, versus 50% change in a dense city.
It is interesting that many NH posters have a negative view on immigration from eastern europe. However, the effect on the countries from which people emigrate (I am somewhat familiar with Baltics) is quite tough. Imagine having a large portion of hard working energetic people suddenly leave.
I imagine (and see it daily all around me actually). This poses to local authorities a hard problem, the outcome of which will either be a spiral down or a remedy of some sort.
Looks like people are moving to the coastal areas. And I can't blame them. Once you live next to a large body of water, being land-locked is suffocating.
Another obvious trend is people moving to large cities.
Guyane is considered part of France (so part of the EU), but the Falklands (and other overseas territories, there are a few) aren't part of the UK, or the EU.
I don't know why it is so desperately needed, but Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon seems to have lost about 3% population during this period, going from 6300 in 1999 to 6069 in 2012.
Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Wallis-et-Futuna are rarely included in such stats as they are not part of the EU and not geographically part of Europe either, unlike French Guiana and the others which are part of EU, so at least part of Europe in a political sense.
(Symbiote, all of these territories are very much part of France though, just under different rules for some of them.)
I don't know where you're going with Clipperton though, it's sometimes illegally visited and trashed by fishers and such, but they can't be considered a population in any sense.
Anyone have any idea why in the countries most hit by the recession (Spain, Italy and Greece to name a few) there's striking divergence between population growth specifically decreasing Greece on one hand while increasing in Italy and Spain in general despite the three of them share the same dynamics at play and especially Greece and Spain?
Madrid and all surrounding cities (Toledo, etc.) are a big shade of red. Barcelona and in fact the entire densely populated Mediterranean coast (Valencia, etc.) is also lipstick-red. Sure, let's look at the Basque Country. Also red.
The only blue I see is in the mostly rural Extremadura, Leon, etc. (close to Portugal).
So even if pop. decreased, not everyone moved from e.g. Madrid to Germany. Many people moved to smaller cities or rural areas, so if you just see the map without pop densities it looks that way.
As I see it, most of the blue blobs are in Portugal and Galicia or the Northwest in general. Other population centers in Spain are growing despite the recession and stratospheric youth unemployment.
Also worth mentioning, Spanish people are still regarded to be religious to some extent and so are the Greek. So, I'm a bit surprised to see the divergence here where Greeks shun marriage and raising children while their Spanish counterparts still hold to these traditional values.
"So, I'm a bit surprised to see the divergence here where Greeks shun marriage and raising children while their Spanish counterparts still hold to these traditional values."
Looks like South Europe has abandoned having enough children to replace themselves simultaneously. One cannot blame them: those countries are horribly overpopulated, even more so than the USA.
And what few babies there are are significantly being born to Middle Eastern and African settlers attracted by gullible immigration policies that overcrowded countries can ill afford.
Eastern Europeans are much more likely to migrate to Italy and Spain than to Greece. Romanians especially. One reason is that Romanian is closer to Italian and Spanish than to Greek.
It's true that the language plays a role in deciding where one prefers to go, but there are also the somewhat more prosaic considerations like the economical ones. The state of Greek economy is nothing like that of Italy or Spain. I have a romanian relative that left Greece after seven years (time in which she learned Greek, accommodated herself and everything) and settled for Italy recently. The hardships exist and this move wasn't easy (from an economical point of view, compared to her previous pre-recession Greece settling experience), but with all that it seems that it still does worth it.
It's also a self fueling process, as the current migrant workers help others migrate and find jobs. The more Romanians there are in a country, the easier it is to migrate there.
Ireland has had a recession since 2008 but ended last year with a return to slow growth and during this time had high unemployment and high emigration. It's expected to be the fastest growing European economy by far over the next 12 months. Still Irelands prosperity, high minimum wage and generous welfare benefits are attracting immigration from Eastern Europe and North Africa in particular. This compounded with Irelands high fertility rate accentuates her population growth above her neighbours.
These trends are expected to continue even as Europe exits recession and returns to growth.
The images surprised me though - it suggests all of Ireland is growing somewhat evenly when the truth is that while most if is growing Dublin and her surrounding area and Cork are growing much faster than the rest and the picture doesn't indicate that though I'm sure the data will.