Originally published at Forbes.com on October 1, 2019.
This is, I admit, a headline I simply stumbled upon in looking for something else: “Statistics Finland unveils bleak population forecast – population to start decline in 2031“ from today’s edition of the English-language Helsinki Times.
“Not a single Finnish province will record more births than deaths 15 years from now unless the birth rate rebounds from its current record-low level, indicates a much anticipated population forecast published on Monday by Statistics Finland.”
As a reminder, this is Finland we’re talking about, not a country that ordinarily appears in discussions about ultra-low fertility rates. This isn’t Italy or Japan.
This is Finland, named the happiest country in the world in a 2019 ranking – and was #1 in 2018 as well, #5 in 2017 and 2016, #6 in 2015, #7 in 2013 (there was no 2014 report), according to the World Happiness Report researchers, who combine both objective and subjective measures of well-being and life satisfaction.
And Finland has generous levels of parental leave provision:
Maternity leave begins between 50 to 30 working days before the due date, and lasts for 105 working days, during which time Kela, the Finnish Social Security agency, pays a “maternity allowance.” Fathers can take paternity leave for a maximum of 54 working days and receive a “paternity allowance”; 18 of these days can be taken at the same time as the mother. Then “parental leave” continues for a further 158 days.
After parental leave benefits end, a parent can stay at home, unpaid but with job protection, until the child’s third birthday, and receive a “child home care allowance.” Or parents can choose a daycare center and receive subsidies based on income, paying nothing for low-income families and up to a maximum of EUR 290 for one child, per month, for higher-income families.
What’s not to like?
But yet, here’s the development of the fertility rate over the past decade (according to “Steep decline in the birth rate continued” at Statistics Finland and “The decline in the birth rate is reflected in the population development of areas” for the estimated 2019 rate):
Finland’s TFR 2009 – 2019
From Statistics Finland
or, in graphical form,
Finland TFR 2009 – 2019
From Statistics Finland
What happened here?
Regular readers will recall that in August I profiled the declining Swedish fertility rate, and in the course of my reading I learned that its extreme cyclicality is attributed to the effects of certain parental leave and other policies causing parents to speed up births temporarily. Putting Sweden and Finland side-by-side (with somewhat less recent data) shows that Finland has been much more stable in its fertility rates, but has collapsed over this past decade.
Fertility Rates, Finland and Sweden
From World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=FI-SE
Is this due to a poor economy? Finland’s unemployment rate rose from a relative low of 7.7% in 2012 to a post-recession high of 9.4% in 2015 but has been declining since then, and now stands at a level of 6.7%, nearly again equal to its pre-recession low of 6.4% in 2008 – which itself is as low as its been since the end of the Cold War. The country’s real GDP growth rate had likewise dropped in the same timeframe, but then recovered and has only slowed slightly since then.
In an interview, Finnish Prime Minister Antti Rinne commented on the decline:
“’It’s a fact that parenthood has substantially reduced the pensions of women. Women’s careers and income development are the key issues we have to tackle to make sure those who are able and willing to start a family can do so. These are major issues,’ he commented.
“Another area in need of development are services, according to him.
“’I’m concerned that maybe we’re not focusing on the right things if we’re not developing the services of families with children. We have to construct the entire service network in a way that families with children feel that they are supported,’ he underlined.”
Do Finnish families feel that the benefits available to them are insufficient? Would a look into the finer points of the system reveal perceptions that the parental leave benefits are inadequate, or that there are waiting lists for daycare slots? Yet there does not appear to have been a worsening of conditions that needs to be rectified, so it’s hard to see this as a cause of this decline. What’s more, Finland was deemed to be the 4th most gender-equal country on the globe, according to the World Economic Forum’s analysis, behind only – you guessed it, Iceland, Norway and Sweden (Denmark, oddly, comes in at only 13).
Now, maybe the Finnish birth rate will perk up again unexpectedly, and perhaps this will turn out to have been a statistical fluke all along. But, as with Sweden, it calls into question the conventional wisdom that the path to replacement-level fertility rates is a combination of gender equality and generous social welfare provision.
December 2024 Author’s note: the terms of my affiliation with Forbes enable me to republish materials on other sites, so I am updating my personal website by duplicating a selected portion of my Forbes writing here.
I think families with children should pay less tax, inorder for them to have the means to rise their children because to rise a child is expensive in Finland.
More benefits should be given to family with children with out thinking of their income, with that any one will be happy to have kids without thinking of the cost involved.
If I recall right, after the wars, Finns had a lot of children that resulted in a big population boom.
Soon those generations start to die out of old age, causing the population to drop suddenly.
Clearly deaths will dominate births for a time and drop the number of people to a new low.
Things that may effect population growth:
Success. The more successful a person is the less look they after both to cohabitate or have children.
Fulfillment: if you are fulfilled any bother with children
Selfishness: a byproduct of the above and resulting from general prosperity.
Entertainment: lack of Internet services and power failures.
The highest birthrates are in poorer countries, after distress and war, or as a result of power failures. Not saying we need more poverty, war, or disasters but altruism flourishes in hard times. Altruism is about one’s relationship with others. In prosperous countries the emphasis is on self.
Imagine if we could decrease would population from 7bn to 3.5bn through lower birth rates. Better for the environment, crowded cities, housing… If only every country would decline it’s birth rate to 2.0 or less!
Something I haven’t seen mentioned in local nor global media is how eco-conscious Finn’s have become.
Reducing your family’s carbon footprint often means having fewer children than you might otherwise want. Moreover, if we can’t be sure our children would enjoy at least the same quality of life and opportunities as us then the respectul thing to do is not bring them into this world.
First of all, it is not given that the job is secured, thus it is in theory but not in practise. Also, there is still work to be done for equality.
More over, during the leave, the one staying at home (usually the mother) is not only falling behind in salary progression and promotion opportunities, but is also not increasing pension during that time.
I am not certain what the problem is. When a society ensures that a family’s children will likely survive to be adults, it becomes less imperative for couples to have many children. Finland is a success story. I am sorry that this success doesn’t translate into corporate success, but maybe corporations should factor a lower fertility rate into their future business plans.
Younger Finnish generations use much time on internet and
entertainment and do not interact face to face, which obviously is the key for
meeting someone.
Selfishness resulting from success (of those who have succeeded)
and personal possibilities enjoying life without responsibility of someone else.
Then there are other reasons such as;
So called ‘Zero hour work contracts’, when worker is offered 0 – 40 hours work per week,
often in reality leading to only some 10-25 hours per week in practise.
No one can ground family on those uncertain terms.
Divorce courts that favor women in separation situations. Men are no more willing
to take a risk, since roughly 50% of marriages end up to divorce.
The Finnish courts favor women and order the children to mother. Men will have to pay high
alimony and are treated very badly in the process. Younger generations have
learned from their parents and their own lives (as they often themselves are from divorced family)
how it may end up and do not want it to happen to themselves or their own children.
Finland unfortunetly is suffering from high living costs together with precarious job situation. Many of those listed as employed have freelancer temporary contracts and the amount they make per month doesn’t even cover their bills requiring them to appeal to welfare services. Hobbies for children are extremely expensive here while in the US those activities are free after school. Ice hockey for example which is the most popular sports here can cost a family close to 1000€ per child…with average wages here being 2500€ two kids could already bankrupt a family…Iceland has had a very good initiative on this sense by offering “hobby vouchers” to families…this has considerably reduced youth drunkenness and drug use over there…Iceland should be the world’s happiest country not us…
One word. FEMINISM. You misandrist bigoted broads are ruining the world.
I think the sad truth is that people compare children to any number of competing goods, and in the short-term, people usually pick the competing goods. The trouble is that this short-term preference transforms into a long-term choice because people underestimate the drop in fertility as they age, especially women. They also underestimate the degree of regret they will have by never having children once the opportunity passes.
It is probably politically impossible, but if the Finnish state wanted to push up the birthrate, sanctions for adults with no children would be more effective.