Projections: Danish cities face overcrowding

Denmark’s biggest cities will be overcrowded and populated primarily by young people in the future.

This is according to new population projections by Statistics Denmark as reported on Seven59.dk and b.dk.

The elderly will reside in depopulated country districts while one in six people will be an immigrant, or the descendant of an immigrant, by 2050.

More than a million immigrants

According to professor of demography Poul Christian Matthiesen of the University of Copenhagen it doesn’t require much imagination to see the challenges that lie ahead, especially regarding immigrants from non-western countries who continue to be a financial burden on the state.

“Integration hasn’t gone as hoped,” he says. “The level of unemployment is unacceptable and the cultural clashes and problems still haven’t been solved by second and third generation immigrant families. The more that come here, the bigger the problem, and that’s one of the biggest challenges facing Denmark in the future.”

There are currently around 580,000 immigrants and their descendants living in Denmark but, according to Statistics Denmark, the figure will grow to over a million by 2050 when the population will have expanded to 6.1m.

Change in countries of origin

While immigration from ‘traditional’ countries of origin such as Turkey, Pakistan, and Lebanon continues to grow, there has been a significant influx from China, India, the Philippines, Ukraine, and western countries over the past few years.

See the article about it in Danish here.

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