公认的看法认为，用19世纪社会学家奥古斯特.孔德的话来说就是“人口统计学是天命”，而欧洲是由其死亡螺旋式的人口数字注定的。

• Received opinion holds, in the phrase of Auguste Comte, a19 th-century social scientist, that“ demography is destiny” and that Europe is doomed by its death-spiral population numbers.