Merkel, Will she survive? Options

[TallDarkAndHands...]

Probably as Germans seem to be quite accepting of the large number of migrants, the majority of whom must be peaceful.

Just glad she is not in charge of the UK. Good luck to the Germans. Doing the "right" thing has a price. Some German civillians have paid it. Just sad.

[Rdg]

But all these problems are far more to do with an aging population than immigration. HUge generalisations coming up and they are all "on average"

Go back 40 years and the average man worked until a retirement at 65 and then only survived a couple of years to take a pension and be a burden on the welfare state - his wife lived longer but was given a pitiful pension anyway so regularly went to live with the family or in an old peoples home . You usually had 3 generations alive and people had no problem with children sharing rooms. Now a lot of the current pensioners retired before the age of 65, they are living as couples still in big houses, the divorce rate went up (more housing needed for that), most people aim to have a room per child if possible and very few want an elderly relative living with them ( people try and stay in their own homes as long as they can) even though children knowing their great grandparents is now not rare - from 1961-2011 the number of 1 or 2 person households grew from 44% to 64% of all households (england outside london).

http://www.lse.ac.uk/socialPolicy/Research...family-size.pdf

If the number of 1&2 person households has grown by 50% whilst the population has grown from 52.2m to 64.9m which is about 20% then it is obvious the housing problem is more a factor of household size than population size. Even more when you consider that the change in 1&2 person is of a rate whilst population is an absolute so 1&2 person households are 50% more of a base which is 20% higher to start with.