[Someone]

"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.

[merb]

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.

[Someone]

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.

[crdb]

He's partly correct: German growth is by design.

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.

[fwn]

I highly doubt that people work harder in advancing economies.

[solve]

Exactly what I was saying. The map is terribly hard to interpret unless you can make a rough guess of how many people live in each tiny segment.