Demographics of Europe

Population density in the European Union and the EFTA countries, along with candidate countries (2017)

Population growth and decline as of 2009 in Europe and the Middle East

Figures for the population of Europe vary according to the particular definition of Europe's boundaries. In 2018, Europe had a total population of over 751 million people.^[1][2] Russia is the most populous country in Europe, with a population of 146 million.

Europe's population growth is low, and its median age high. Most of Europe is in a mode of sub-replacement fertility, which means that each new(-born) generation is becoming less populous than the older.^[3] Nonetheless most West-European countries still have growing populations mainly due to immigration within Europe and from outside Europe and some due to increases in life expectancy and population momentum. Some current and past factors in European demography have included emigration, ethnic relations, economic immigration, a declining birth rate and an ageing population.

History[]

Estimates for historical population sizes of Europe (including Central Asia, listed under "former USSR") based on Maddison (2007),^[4] in millions, with estimated percentage of world population:

Historical population of Europe and former USSR, AD 1–2020[]

Source: Maddison and others (University of Groningen)^[5]

Note: These numbers do not include the population of European countries' colonies. Only population within Europe.

Total population[]

330,000,000 people lived in Europe in 1916.^[7] In 1950 there were 549,000,000.^[8] The population of Europe in 2015 was estimated to be 741 million according to the United Nations,^[8] which was slightly less than 11% of the world population. The precise figure depends on the exact definition of the geographic extent of Europe. The population of the European Union (EU) was 509 million as of 2015.^[9] Non-EU countries situated in Europe in their entirety^[10] account for another 94 million. Five transcontinental countries^[11] have a total of 247 million people, of which about half reside in Europe proper.

As it stands now, around 10% of the world's people live in Europe. If demographic trends keep their pace, its share may fall to around 7% in 2050, but still amounting to 716 million people in absolute numbers, according to the United Nations estimate.^[8] (The decline in the percentage is partly due to high fertility rates in other parts of the world.) The sub-replacement fertility and high life expectancy in most European states mean a declining and aging population. High immigration and emigration levels within and from outside the continent are taking place and quickly changing countries, specifically in Western Europe, from a single ethnic group to a multicultural society. These trends change societies' economies as well as their political and social institutions.^{[how?][citation needed]}

Vital statistics[]

Population by country[]

Modern political map

Council of Europe members, with the ten founding states in yellow

According to different definitions, such as consideration of the concept of Central Europe, the following territories and regions may be subject to various other categorisations aside from geographic conventions.

Population and area of European countries/territories

Country (or territory)	Population [1][2]	Area (km2)[12]	Density (per km2)	Capital
Albania *	2,882,740	28,748	100	Tirana
Andorra *	77,006	468	165	Andorra la Vella
Armenia *	2,951,745	29,743	99	Yerevan
Austria *	8,891,388	83,871	106	Vienna
Azerbaijan *	9,949,537	86,600	115	Baku
Belarus *	9,452,617	207,600	46	Minsk
Belgium *	11,482,178	30,528	376	Brussels
Bosnia and Herzegovina *	3,323,925	51,209	65	Sarajevo
Bulgaria *	7,051,608	110,900	64	Sofia
Croatia *	4,156,405	56,594	73	Zagreb
Cyprus *	1,189,265	9,251	129	Nicosia
Czech Republic *	10,665,677	78,866	135	Prague
Denmark *	5,752,126	43,094	133	Copenhagen
Estonia *	1,322,920	45,227	29	Tallinn
Faroe Islands * (Denmark)	49,709	1,399	35.6	Tórshavn
Finland *	5,522,576	336,852	16	Helsinki
France *	64,990,511	551,500	118	Paris
Georgia *	4,002,942	69,700	57	Tbilisi
Germany *	83,124,418	357,137	233	Berlin
Gibraltar * (UK)	33,718	6	5,620	Gibraltar
Greece *	10,522,246	131,957	80	Athens
Guernsey *[d]	65,345	63	1,037	St. Peter Port
Hungary *	9,707,499	93,026	104	Budapest
Iceland *	336,713	103,000	3	Reykjavík
Ireland *	4,818,690	69,825	69	Dublin
Isle of Man *[d]	84,077	572	147	Douglas
Italy *	60,627,291	301,339	201	Rome
Jersey *[d]	97,857	116	844	Saint Helier
Kosovo **[p]	1,859,203	10,887	171	Pristina
Latvia *	1,928,459	64,562	30	Riga
Liechtenstein *	37,910	160	237	Vaduz
Lithuania *	2,801,264	65,300	43	Vilnius
Luxembourg *	604,245	2,586	234	Luxembourg
Malta *	439,248	316	1,390	Valletta
Moldova *	4,051,944	33,846	120	Chişinău
Monaco *	38,682	2	19,341	Monaco
Montenegro *	627,809	13,812	45	Podgorica
Netherlands *	17,059,560	37,354	457	Amsterdam
North Macedonia *	2,082,957	25,713	81	Skopje
Norway *	5,337,962	323,787	16	Oslo
Poland *	37,921,592	311,888	122	Warsaw
Portugal *[f]	10,256,193	92,212	111	Lisbon
Romania *	19,506,114	238,391	82	Bucharest
Russia *	145,734,038	17,098,246	9	Moscow
San Marino *	33,785	61	554	San Marino
Serbia *[g]	8,802,754	88,361	100	Belgrade
Slovakia *	5,453,014	49,036	111	Bratislava
Slovenia *	2,077,837	20,273	102	Ljubljana
Spain *	46,692,858	505,992	92	Madrid
Svalbard and Jan Mayen (Norway)	2,868	62,422	0	Longyearbyen
Sweden *	9,971,638	450,295	22	Stockholm
Switzerland *	8,525,611	41,285	207	Bern
Transnistria *	505,000	4,163	121.3	Tiraspol
Turkey *	82,340,088	783,562	105	Ankara
Ukraine *	44,246,156	603,500	73	Kyiv
United Kingdom *	67,141,684	242,495	277	London
Vatican City *	842	0.4	1,913.6	Vatican City
Åland (Finland)	28,666	1,580	18	Mariehamn

* indicates link goes to article on demographics of the country (or territory), not just the country itself.

Age[]

Mirroring their mostly sub-replacement fertility and high life expectancy, European countries tend to have older populations overall. They had nine of the top ten highest median ages in national populations in 2005. Only Japan had an older population.^[13]

Religion[]

Over the last several centuries, religious practice has been on the decline in a process of secularization. Several European countries have experienced a decline in church attendance as well as a decline in the number of people professing a religious belief. The 2010 Eurobarometer survey found that, on average, 51% of the citizens of the European Union that they believe there is a God, 26% believe there is some sort of spirit or life force and 20% don't believe there is any sort of spirit, God or life force. 3% declined to answer.^[14] The Eurobarometer survey must be taken with caution, however, as there are discrepancies between it and national census results. For example, in the United Kingdom, the 2001 census revealed that over 70% of the population regarded themselves as "Christians" with only 15% professing to have no religion, though the wording of the question has been criticized as "misleading" by the British Humanist Association.^[15] The 2011 census showed a dramatic reduction to less than 60% of the population regarding themselves as "Christians".^[16]

Despite its decline, Christianity is still the largest religion in Europe. According to a survey published in 2010, 76.2% of Europeans identified themselves as Christians.^[17][18] Catholics were the largest Christian group in Europe, accounting for more than 48% of European Christians.^[19] The second-largest Christian group in Europe was the Orthodox, who made up 32% of European Christians.^[19] And about 19% of European Christians were part of the Protestant tradition. Europe constitutes in absolute terms the world's largest Christian population.^[20]

According to a 2003 study,^[21] 47% of French people declared themselves as agnostics in 2003. This situation is often called "Post-Christian Europe". A decrease in religiousness and church attendance in western Europe (especially in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden) has been noted. According to a survey published in 2012, atheists and agnostics make up about 18.2% of the European population.^[22] According to the same survey the religiously unaffiliated make up the majority of the population only in two European countries: Czech Republic (75%) and Estonia (60%).^[22]

According to another survey about Religiosity in the European Union from 2012 by Eurobarometer, Christianity was the largest religion in the Union (accounting for 72% of the total population), Catholics were with 48% the largest Christian group in the Union, Protestants made up 12%, Eastern Orthodox made up 8% and other Christians accounted for 4% of the total population.^[23] non-believers/agnostics accounted for 16%, atheists accounted for 7% and Muslims accounted for 2%.^[24]

Muslims are younger and have more children than non-Muslims in Europe overall.^[25]

Fertility and migration drove Muslim population growth in Europe between 2010 and 2016.^[26]

Ethnic groups[]

Pan and Pfeil (2004) count 87 distinct "peoples of Europe", of which 33 form the majority population in at least one sovereign state, while the remaining 54 constitute ethnic minorities. The total number of national minority populations in Europe is estimated at 105 million people, or 14% of 770 million Europeans. (including Europeans in Siberia)^[27]

The largest ethnic groups are the Russians, with 117 million, and the Germans, with 72 million. In some countries such as the United Kingdom, France and Spain, the designation of nationality may controversially take on ethnic aspects, subsuming smaller ethnic groups such as Scots, Welsh, Bretons and Basques, making it difficult to quantify a "British" or "French" ethnicity, for example.

Approximately 20 million non-Europeans live in the EU, 4% of the overall population.^[28] There are an estimated 10 million Romani people in Europe.^[29]

Language[]

Most of the languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. This family is divided into a number of branches, including Romance, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, Celtic and Greek. The Uralic languages, which include Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, also have a significant presence in Europe. The Turkic family also has several European members, while the North Caucasian and Kartvelian families are important in the southeastern extremity of geographical Europe. The Basque language of the western Pyrenees is an isolate unrelated to any other group, while Maltese is the only Semitic language in Europe with national language status. The most spoken language of Europe is Russian, which belongs to the group of Slavic languages.

The European Union, which excludes many European countries (e.g. Norway, Russia, Switzerland, United Kingdom), recognised 23 official languages as of 2007.^[31] According to the same source, the eight most natively spoken languages in the EU were (percentage of total EU population^[31]):

1. 19% German
2. 13% French
3. 12% English
4. 11% Italian
5. 9% Spanish
6. 9% Polish
7. 7% Romanian
8. 5% Dutch

These figures change when foreign language skills are taken into account. The list below shows the top eight European languages ordered by total number of speakers in the EU:^[31]

1. 49% English
2. 35% German
3. 26% French
4. 16% Italian
5. 15% Spanish
6. 10% Polish
7. 7% Russian
8. 6% Dutch

This makes German the most frequently spoken native language and English the most frequently spoken non-native language overall in the European Union, with German the second-most common language overall.

Languages that are not official state languages are protected in many European countries by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. These can include languages spoken by relatively many people, such as Catalan and Basque in Spain, as well as languages spoken by relatively few such as Cornish and Scottish Gaelic in the United Kingdom.

Genetic origins[]

Homo sapiens appeared in Europe roughly 40,000 years ago, with the settlement of the Cro-Magnons. Over the prehistoric period there was continuous settlement in Europe, notably by the immediate descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans who migrated west after the advent of the Neolithic revolution.^[32]

Mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome DNA[]

Studies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) have suggested substantial genetic homogeneity of European populations,^[33] with only a few geographic or linguistic isolates appearing to be genetic isolates as well.^[34] On the other hand, analyses of the Y chromosome^[35][36] and of autosomal diversity^[37] have shown a general gradient of genetic similarity running from the southeast to the northwest of the continent.

According to geneticist David Reich, based on ancient human genomes that his laboratory sequenced in 2016, Europeans descend from a mixture of four distinct ancestral components.^[38] As one editorial opinion expressed it:

"[W]hites" are not derived from a population that existed from time immemorial, as some people believe. Instead "whites" represent a mixture of four ancient populations that lived 10,000 years ago and were each as different from one another as Europeans and East Asians are today.^[39]

Genetic analyses show that European populations show evidence for geneflow from an East Asian-related group (samplified by the Amis, Han, or Tianyuan), in considerable amounts (~8% up to 32%). In contrast, no evidence for European-related geneflow into East Asians (Amis, Han, Tianyuan) was found.^[40]

Population structure[]

A study in May 2009^[41] that examined 19 populations from Europe using 270,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) highlighted the genetic diversity of European populations corresponding to the northwest to southeast gradient and distinguished "several distinct regions" within Europe:

• Finland
• the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), western Russia and Poland.
• Central and Western Europe.
• Italy, South-Eastern Europe, Southern Russia.

In this study, Fst (Fixation index) was found to correlate considerably with geographic distances ranging from ≤0.0010 for neighbouring populations to 0.0230 for Southern Italy and Finland. For comparisons, pair-wise Fst of non-European samples were as follows: Europeans – Yoruba (West Africans) 0.1530; Europeans – Chinese 0.1100; Yoruba (West Africans) – Chinese 0.1900.^[42]

See also[]

• Area and population of European countries
• Classical demography
• European diasporas
• European Union statistics
• Migration from Latin America to Europe
• Largest cities of the European Union by population within city limits
• Largest urban areas of the European Union
• List of European countries by population growth rate
• List of European countries by population
• List of metropolitan areas in Europe
• Medieval demography
• Demographics of the world
• List of countries by fertility rate

Notes[]

^ a: Continental regions as per UN categorisations/map. Depending on definitions, various territories cited below may be in one or both of Europe and Asia, or Africa.
^ b: Includes Transnistria, a region that has declared, and de facto achieved, independence; however, it is not recognised de jure by sovereign states.
^ c: Russia is considered a transcontinental country in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. However, the population and area figures include the entire state.
^ d: Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Jersey are Crown dependencies of the United Kingdom. Other Channel Islands in the Bailiwick of Guernsey include Alderney and Sark.
^ e: Cyprus is physiographically entirely in Western Asia, but it has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe. The population and area figures refer to the entire state, including the de facto independent part Northern Cyprus.
^ f: Figures for Portugal include the Azores and Madeira archipelagos, both in Northern Atlantic.
^ g: Area figure for Serbia includes Kosovo, a province that unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008, and whose sovereign status is unclear. Population and density figures are 2010 estimates and are given without the disputed territory of Kosovo.
^ h: Figures for France include metropolitan France but not overseas departments and territories as they are not part of the European continent.
^ j: Kazakhstan is physiographically considered a transcontinental country in Central Asia (UN region) and Eastern Europe, with European territory west of the Ural Mountains and both the Ural and Emba rivers. However, area and population figures refer to the entire country.
^ k: Armenia is physiographically entirely in Western Asia, but it has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe. The population and area figures include the entire state respectively.
^ m: Georgia is often considered a transcontinental country in Western Asia and Eastern Europe. However, the population and area figures include the entire state. This also includes Georgian estimates for Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two regions that have declared and de facto achieved independence. The International recognition, however, is limited.
^ o: The total figures for area and population includes the whole of the transcontinental countries. The precision of these figure is compromised by the ambiguous geographical extend of Europe and the lack of references for European portions of transcontinental countries.
^ p: Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008. Its sovereign status is unclear. Its population is a 2007 estimate.
^ r: Abkhazia and South Ossetia unilaterally declared their independence from Georgia on 25 August 1990 and 28 November 1991 respectively. Their sovereign status is unclear. Population figures stated as of 2003 census and 2000 estimates respectively.

References[]

External links[]

• Eurostat – Population and population change statistics (Note that this only covers present and projected future population.)
• Eurostat – Population projections