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Nordic countries crying for kids

COPENHAGEN: “Norway needs more children! I don’t think I need to tell anyone how this is done,” Norway’s prime minister said cheekily, but she was raising a real concern.

Too few babies are being born in the Nordic region. The Nordic countries were long a bastion of strong fertility rates on an Old Continent that is rapidly getting older. But they are now experiencing a decline that threatens their cherished welfare model, funded by taxpayers.

“In the coming decades, we will encounter problems with this model,” Prime Minister Erna Solberg warned Norwegians in her New Year’s speech. “There will be fewer young people to bear the increasingly heavy burden of the welfare state.”

In Norway, Finland, and Iceland, birth rates dropped to historic lows in 2017, with 1.49 to 1.71 children born per woman. Just a few years earlier, their birth rates hovered close to the 2.1 level required for their populations to remain stable. From Copenhagen to the North Cape, from Helsinki to Reykjavik, demographics across the Nordics reveal two things: there are fewer large families, and women are waiting longer before having their first child.

There’s no single explanation, but financial uncertainty and a sharp rise in housing costs are seen as likely factors. Experts present differing diagnoses and prescriptions to remedy the situation. In Norway, one economist concerned about the effect the slowing demographics will have on economic growth has suggested giving women 500,000 kroner (50,000 euros, $58,550) in pension savings for each child born.

Another has suggested that, on the contrary, women in Norway who reach the age of 50 without having had a child should be paid one million kroner, since children also cost society a lot. Finnish municipalities have already decided to loosen their purse strings to encourage locals to get busy under the covers. The town of Miehikkala, home to 2,000 people, is offering 10,000 euros for each baby born and raised in the municipality.

“The number of childless individuals is growing rapidly, and the number of women having three or more children is going down. This kind of fall is unheard of in modern times in Finland,” said Anna Rotkirch, a family sociologist at the umbrella organization Finnish Family Federation. The Nordic region already boasts a wealth of family-friendly initiatives, such as flexible working hours, a vast network of affordable daycares and generous parental leave systems.

But when all that is still not enough to encourage people to have more children, immigration can be a lifeline — or a threat, depending on the point of view. Sweden may have a falling birth rate, but it still comes in second in the EU behind France with 1.85 children born per woman in 2016.

That is largely due to Sweden’s decades-long history of immigration: immigrant women tend to have more children than the average Swede. With 2.6 children per woman in recent years, the town of Aneby in southern Sweden has one of the highest rates in the country, a phenomenon attributed to the fact that it opened its doors to immigrants two decades ago.

“Aneby welcomed around 225 Eritreans in the early 1990s and just after that (it took in) refugees from the Balkans. 1994 was a demographic record for the town,” local official Ola Gustafsson told the Media.  But population growth among minorities has also fuelled fears. A former justice minister in Norway, Per-Willy Amundsen of the populist far-right, made headlines, his stated goal was to stop Somalis who, he said, had a higher “birth production” rate than “ethnic Norwegians”.

M M Alam

M. M. Alam is a Pakistan-based working journalist since 1981. Karachi University faculty gold medalist Alam began his career four decades ago by writing for Dawn, Pakistan’s highest circulating English daily. He has worked for region’s leading publications, global aviation periodicals including Rotors (of USA) and vetted New York Times as permanent employee of daily Express Tribune. Alam regularly covers international aviation and defense-related events including Salon Du Bourget (France), Farnborough (United Kingdom), Dubai (UAE). Alam has reported thousands of events and interviewed hundreds of people in Pakistan, UAE, EU, UK and USA. Being Francophone Alam also coordinates with a number of French publications.