Contents: Introduction by Commissioner Vladimír Špidla to the four essays written in response to the communication on The Demographic Future of Europe; David A. COLEMAN: Demographic diversity and the ethnic consequences of immigration – key issues that the Commission's report left out; Jonathan GRANT and Stijn HOORENS: Does the Commission's report adequately address the key issues of the demographic future of Europe?; Wolfgang LUTZ: Adaptation versus mitigation policies on demographic change in Europe; Paul DEMENY: A clouded view of Europe's demographic future; Wolfgang LUTZ, Sergei SCHERBOV, Gui Ying CAO, Qiang REN and Xiaoying ZHENG: China's uncertain demographic present and future; Jeroen SPIJKER, Frans VAN POPPEL, Leo VAN WISSEN: Explaining new trends in the gender gap of mortality: Insights from a regional trend-analysis from the Netherlands; Franz SCHWARZ: Widening educational disparities in all-cause mortality: An analysis of Austrian data with international comparisons; Gustav FEICHTINGER, Maria WINKLER-DWORAK, Inga FREUND, Alexia PRSKAWETZ and Fernando RIOSMENA: On the age dynamics of learned societies – taking example of the Austrian Academy of Sciences; Dominik GRAFENHOFER, Christian JAAG, Christian KEUSCHNIGG and Mirela KEUSCHNIGG: Economic aging and demographic change; Diana HUMMEL and Alexandra LUX: Population decline and infrastructure: The case of the German water supply system; Wolfgang LUTZ, Anne GOUJON, Samir K.C. and Warren SANDERSON: Reconstruction of population by age, sex and level of educational attainment of 120 countries for 1970–2000; Anne GOUJON, Vegard SKIRBEKK, Katrin FLIEGENSCHNEE and Pavel STRZELECKI: New times, old believes: projecting the future size of religion in Austria; Dimiter PHILIPOV and Caroline BERGHAMMER: Religion and fertility ideals, intentions and behaviour: a comparative study of European countries; Isabella BUBER: Ageing in Austria: An overview of "Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe" (SHARE) with special focus on aspects of health; Dalkhat EDIEV and Richard GISSER: Reconstruction of the historical series of life tables and of age-sex structures for the Austrian population in 19th-first half of 20th centuries; Maria Rita TESTA: Childbearing preferences and family issues in Europe: evidence from the Eurobarometer 2006 survey

Using demographic multi-state, cohort-component methods, we produce projections for 120 countries (covering 93% of the world population in 2005) by five-year age groups, sex, and four levels of educational attainment for the years 2005-2050. Taking into account differentials in fertility and mortality by education level, we present the first systematic global educational attainment projections according to four widely differing education scenarios. The results show the possible range of future educational attainment trends around the world, thereby contributing to long-term economic and social planning at the national and international levels, and to the assessment of the feasibility of international education goals

When will least developed countries be most vulnerable to climate change, given the influence of projected socio-economic development? The question is important, not least because current levels of international assistance to support adaptation lag more than an order of magnitude below what analysts estimate to be needed, and scaling up support could take many years. In this paper, we examine this question using an empirically derived model of human losses to climate-related extreme events, as an indicator of vulnerability and the need for adaptation assistance. We develop a set of 50-year scenarios for these losses in one country, Mozambique, using high-resolution climate projections, and then extend the results to a sample of 23 least-developed countries. Our approach takes into account both potential changes in countries’ exposure to climatic extreme events, and socio-economic development trends that influence countries’ own adaptive capacities. Our results suggest that the effects of socio-economic development trends may begin to offset rising climate exposure in the second quarter of the century, and that it is in the period between now and then that vulnerability will rise most quickly. This implies an urgency to the need for international assistance to finance adaptation.

Much of the current debate over secularization in Europe focuses only on the direction of religious change and pays exclusive attention to social causes. Scholars have been less attentive to shifts in the rate of religious decline and to the role of demography—notably fertility and immigration. This article addresses both phenomena. It uses data from the European Values Surveys and European Social Survey for the period 1981–2008 to establish basic trends in religious attendance and belief across the 10 countries that have been consistently surveyed. These show that religious decline is mainly occurring in Catholic European countries and has effectively ceased among post-1945 birth cohorts in six Northwestern European societies where secularization began early. It also provides a cohort-component projection of religious affiliation for two European countries using fertility, migration, switching, and age and sex-structure parameters derived from census and immigration data. These suggest that Western Europe may be more religious at the end of our century than at its beginning.