"Replacement Migration": The UN population division on European populationdecline

The imminent decline of populations in Europe, Japan and South Korea has ge nerated widespread apprehension, largely because of fears that there will n ot be enough working age people to support the elderly. The UN Population D ivision has seemed to endorse those fears by an analysis of the levels of i mmigration needed to provide a constant number or ratio of workers, and by writing of the need for a "solution" to population decline. On the other ha nd, smaller populations would be environmentally advantageous in those coun tries. They must return to replacement level fertility or risk replacement by other populations, but they would benefit if they reached stationarity a t a smaller population level. The transition is manageable if a higher prop ortion of "working age" people go to work. Right now, though dependency rat ios are supposedly-highly "favorable", most of those countries are plagued by high unemployment levels.