Solitary lives of Europeans are leading continent into old age

Europe is facing a "demographic winter" as pensioners outnumber teenagers and birth rates fall, according to a report by the Institute for Family Policy.

The snapshot survey of family life in 27 European countries also says that marriages across Europe are breaking down at the rate of one every 30 seconds. Because of this, the average marriage across the continent lasts just 13 years, the paper states.

The study, entitled The Evolution of the Family in Europe 2008, and unveiled in the European Parliament in Brussels yesterday, describes the European birth rate as "critical", with almost one million fewer babies born last year than in 1980. The total European Union population contained six million more over-65s than under-14s. In 1980, children outnumbered pensioners by 36 million. "Europe is undergoing a demographic winter, and now, Europe is an elderly continent", says the report.

The divorce rate is also up, as one million couples get divorced every year and the number of people choosing to marry is in sharp decline, with a "dramatic" reduction in the marriage rate of 24 per cent between 1980 and 2006.

The country with the highest rates of marriage breakdown were Belgium, Luxembourg and Spain with two out of three marriages ending in divorce in each country. The report also shows that just four countries account for 60 per cent of the continent's divorces: Germany, Britain, France and Spain.

The report also reveals that more Europeans are leading solitary domestic lives. More than 54 million Europeans choose to live alone, and two out of three households have no children at all.

Couples are also choosing to have children later, with women starting a family at an average age of 29, and men at 31. This makes the average delay in having babies five years later than 25 years ago.

The think-tank called for more family-based policies to tackle what it is calling a decline in the institution. "Although there is growing awareness of the problems faced by families in the EU, there is no organisation which is in charge of family policy, nor does it have a family observatory or a Green Paper on the family", it said.

Abortion rates were also analysed in the paper, which found that one in five pregnancies in Europe end in abortion. The rate of abortion is rising fastest in Spain, where it has increased by 99 per cent between 1996 and 2006.

The report, which compared the number of annual abortions to the population of Slovenia, has caused outrage amongst family planning organisations. Tony Kerridge, of Marie Stopes International, said: "What do the authors of this report want? Do they want to go back to the days when women were coerced into having baby after baby? Women are exercising their choices, and thank God we do have laws in western Europe that recognise and support their right to control their fertility. Without these laws and protection we go back to the time when Marie Stopes first opened her clinics, and women were dying in droves because they were having too many children."

The family in Europe

* There is one marital breakdown every 30 seconds in Europe

* There were 920,089 fewer babies born in Europe last year than in 1980

* The average marriage lasts 13 years

* There are 1 million divorces annually

* The number of people getting married went down by 24 per cent between 1980 and 2006

* France has the highest annual abortion rate (206,311)

* The abortion rate is rising fastest in Spain – up 99 per cent between 1996 and 2006

* One in every five pregnancies in Europe ends in abortion