European Population Conference 2024

About EAPS and the European Population Conference

The European Association for Population Studies was founded in 1983 and today represents more than 1,000 individual members from over 50 countries. Its biennial European Population Conference alternates between cities across Europe; recent editions were held in Brussels (2020, hybrid), Vienna (2022), and Edinburgh (2024). The next edition is planned for Warsaw in 2026.

Compared with the PAA's North American focus or the IUSSP's global scope, EAPS explicitly centres European demographic dynamics while also drawing comparative work from researchers covering other world regions. The association publishes the open-access journal Demographic Research in partnership with the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, making much of the work presented at EPC freely accessible after publication. The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, one of the world's leading demography research centres, co-organises and has a strong presence at each EPC.

Fertility at record lows: the European paradox deepens

No single topic generated more discussion at EPC 2024 than the continued fall in European total fertility rates. Eurostat data presented at the conference showed that the EU average TFR fell to approximately 1.46 in 2023 — the lowest recorded since the statistical series began. Several countries set new national records: Italy reached 1.20, Spain 1.19, and South Korea (discussed in comparative sessions) 0.72.

What demographers called the "European fertility paradox" remained a central puzzle: countries with more generous family policies — Scandinavia, France — tend to have higher TFRs within Europe, yet even they have seen declines since the 2010s. The explanation researchers converged on is multifactorial: housing unaffordability, labour market insecurity among young adults, changing partnership norms, and rising educational attainment among women all depress fertility even in welfare states designed to support families. Eurostat's fertility statistics track these trends annually across EU member states.

A dedicated session examined the role of housing costs. Researchers from Sweden, the Netherlands, and Germany presented evidence showing that regions with high rent-to-income ratios had measurably lower fertility rates, and that the correlation had strengthened since 2015 as urban housing costs accelerated. The OECD Affordable Housing Database provided the cross-country comparisons underpinning several of these analyses.

Ageing Europe: pension systems under structural stress

Europe contains eight of the world's ten oldest countries by median age. At EPC 2024, a dedicated ageing stream examined what this means in practice for pension sustainability, healthcare capacity, and long-term care. The old-age dependency ratio — retirees per 100 working-age adults — is projected to double in the EU from around 32 today to over 60 by 2070, according to the Eurostat Ageing Europe report.

Researchers from the OECD Pensions Outlook team presented a cross-country analysis of pension reform trajectories, showing that most European countries had increased statutory retirement ages since 2010 but that the increases had often lagged behind rising life expectancy at birth. The net effect is that the average European man can now expect to spend roughly 20 years in retirement — up from around 12 years in 1970. Funding that through pay-as-you-go pension systems designed for a much younger population structure is the core fiscal challenge driving reform across the continent.

A session on "super-ageing cities" examined urban centres where over-65 population shares are already exceptionally high — including parts of rural Germany, Eastern Spain, and Southern Italy — and what this means for local public services, housing, and economic activity. The Human Mortality Database, maintained jointly by UC Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute, provided the high-quality mortality series underpinning much of this analysis.

Post-COVID mortality: recovery, long-term effects, and data lessons

By 2024, three years of post-COVID data were available and sessions at EPC reviewed what they showed. The picture was mixed. Life expectancy had largely recovered in Northern and Western Europe by 2022–23, but several Eastern European countries — Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary — showed slower recovery, with life expectancy gains from the 2010s not yet fully restored. The EuroMOMO network, which tracks excess mortality across 29 European countries using standardised methods, provided the comparative evidence base.

A methodological session drew lessons from the COVID period for future mortality monitoring. Prior to 2020, excess mortality infrastructure was fragmented across national systems with different baselines, lags, and age-disaggregation. The pandemic exposed these weaknesses and accelerated collaboration. Researchers presented proposals for a permanent European excess mortality surveillance system, building on the EuroMOMO infrastructure and the Short-Term Mortality Fluctuations (STMF) database developed during the pandemic.

"Long COVID" demography — the effect of persistent post-infection health impairment on labour force participation, disability rates, and healthcare demand — was a newer topic with limited data but growing interest. Preliminary analysis from the UK Biobank and similar cohort studies were discussed, with researchers noting that long COVID disproportionately affects working-age adults and could have measurable effects on productivity and dependency ratios over the next decade.

Migration: Europe's demographic buffer

Net migration to Europe has been the primary driver of population growth across the continent since birth rates fell below death rates in several countries. At EPC 2024, migration sessions engaged with the record inflows of 2022–23 — driven by Ukraine, asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa, and continued labour migration — and their demographic consequences. The Eurostat migration statistics showed the EU received a net gain of approximately 1.5 million people in 2022, the highest in decades.

Researchers examined whether migration can structurally offset ageing or merely delay it. The consensus finding — consistent across multiple sessions — is that migration helps but cannot fully substitute for domestic fertility recovery. Migrants themselves age, and sustaining a younger age structure through migration alone would require ever-increasing inflows that are politically and logistically implausible at the required scale. The UN's classic "replacement migration" analysis was revisited in light of more recent data, with researchers updating its estimates for specific European countries.

A session on Ukrainian displacement examined the demographic profile of the approximately 6 million Ukrainians who remained in EU countries as of mid-2024. The population was disproportionately female and of working age — Ukrainian men of military age were barred from leaving Ukraine. Researchers used UNHCR operational data alongside national registration records to model integration trajectories and likely return rates. The long-term demographic contribution of this flow to European host countries is estimated to be modest but positive.

Selected notable sessions

Why EPC matters for understanding European population data

EPC is where European demographic data — much of it produced by national statistical offices across 40+ countries — gets systematically compared, validated, and contextualised. Datasets like the Human Mortality Database, the Human Fertility Database, and the Human Life Table Database — all maintained with strong input from the European research community — are regularly used and stress-tested in EPC sessions. The papers that emerge frequently revise estimates of historical mortality and fertility that eventually feed into datasets like the UN WPP.

For users of this explorer, the European ridgelines on the canvas reflect data that researchers at EPC have spent decades refining. The sharp flattening visible in most European country curves from the 1990s onward, and the divergence between Western and Eastern European trajectories, are among the patterns most intensively studied at this conference. Full proceedings and accepted paper abstracts from EPC 2024 are available through the EAPS EPC 2024 page.