ECB: more migrants and fewer births leave the euro area at 358 million in 2050
Victoria Shinder2 min readA box in the European Central Bank's latest Economic Bulletin, published on 24 September, sets out what Eurostat's newest population projections mean for the euro area. According to EUROPOP 2025, released in April, the population edges up to a peak of 361.4 million in 2037 and then declines, to 358 million in 2050 - the same as in 2025, but with a very different age structure.
Two revisions pull in opposite directions. Net immigration from 2022 to 2024 was much higher than the previous projections assumed, reflecting stronger economic migration and a longer war in Ukraine, so average net inflows for 2022-2050 were revised up from 1.2 million to about 1.4 million a year. Spain accounts for more than half of that revision and is projected to receive a third of the euro area's net inward migration; 77% of migrants are projected to be of working age. Fertility, however, was revised down sharply: the rate stood at 1.33 children per woman in 2024 and is projected to fall further until 2026. The authors call it the largest revision since the first EUROPOP in 2008 - as large as all previous revisions combined - and put it at 5.7 million fewer children than in the 2023 projections. By 2050 the two effects cancel out.
The age structure is where the change shows. The old-age dependency ratio - people aged 65 and over relative to those aged 15 to 64 - rises from 35% in 2025 to 51% in 2050 and 62% in 2100: from just under three people of working age per older person today to about two in 2050. By 2100 the working-age population is projected at 175 million, against 228 million now, and Spain's total population is projected to exceed Italy's.
What it means
For monetary policy, demography works slowly but relentlessly, through potential growth, saving and the neutral rate of interest. The ECB authors draw the fiscal conclusion: stronger migration eases pension pressures until around 2050, but it is the more uncertain of the two forces - flows can reverse - while low fertility is structural. The box warns explicitly that the better near-term numbers should not lead to complacency on pension reform, and notes that higher labour force participation could soften the drag from a smaller working-age population.