What we can see from the above chart is that while Sweden starts off in 1990 relatively older than Finland, and especially Greece, by the time we get to 2020 the order has reversed. Both Sweden and Finland fare rather better than Greece, which undergoes a period of rapid ageing. Of course many ideosyncratic factors can influence this process, such as the moment in which the demographic transition was initiated, the speed with which it occured, or the impact of WWII and its aftermath, and of course rates of immigration are clearly a factor. But what is so striking about this chart is the way in which the fertility effect seems to predominate, since Sweden and Finland have much higher levels of fertility than Greece.
If we now look at the median age comparison for Austria, Belgium and Switzerland, we will again see that (while all three are ageing quite fast) one country - in this case Austria - is ageing much more rapidly than the other two.
and again it is Austrian fertility, which falls significantly below that of the other two and effectively stays there that seems to carry most of the burden in explaining why the Austrian population is now about to age so rapidly.
And if we now move on to look at some the longer term growth charts.
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