Wonderful, thank you! This is a well-founded refutation of the common narrative about dwindling women of childbearing age or older mothers. The latter in particular is also at least partially compensated for by artificial insemination. I had omitted to include age data because it was immediately clear that the decline in births began suddenly in 2022. It happened even faster than you can show in the annual data, namely within a quarter, as far as I can tell for Germany and Sweden.
Great work! As a swede, allow me to raise a few points about our data, which I'm sure insn't unique to us:
Abortion rates have remianed flat for ages, ca 30 000/year carried out. What this means is that even a slight dip in no. of pregnancies per year will have a greater impact, as abortion numbers remain the same, right? Is there a way to compensate or take this into account? My suspicion is, the drop-off in pregnancies -> births from pre- to post-injections is even greater than it looks to be thanks to abortions /not/ dropping in numbers.
The rates differ greatly between swedish women and non-european groups, in two significant ways: the swedish women have 2.1 children, later in life (think it's at age 30ish for the first, typically) and with a greater interval between each. Arab, afghan, negro women all have more than four children, often more than six, and at short intervals, also they have their first one at age 20 or so. Surely, this has some kind of impact on the data, apart from effecting slow genocide via migration and wombs? To get at such data however, you have to be an accredited researcher - data correlation to race/culture are collected, but are generally not made public, f.e. the data of the ethnic composition of prisoners is not made public, hasn't been for 20+ years now.
I'm sure you're aware of similar potential sources of small but cumulative errors, still all we can do is work with the data as known, so again I say good work!
(Apologies, for spelling, grammar, am in a hurry.)
Abortions in Sweden were lower in 2020 and 2021. I examined the issue in more detail for Germany because quarterly data is available here. In Sweden, only annual data is available.
More detailed data is available from Sweden, but not from SCB (Statistics Sweden) - you have to ask Socialstyrelsen for access to their records; from them it should be possible to see day-by-day but odds are you'd have to put it together from raw data, and that's if they release it to you in the first place.
Interesting, thank you. That's why I don't ask for data to be released. It may be that you don't get it and if you do, it's no longer up to date. I'm focusing on data that is released regularly, up to date, at short intervals and with little later corrections. The Swedish data, as far as available, is excellent in this. After all, the whole thing is also a news business. Whoever sees something first wins. ;-)
I also cannot really understand why some authorities sit on their data like a bird on its eggs. Almost all countries have done everything to prevent the death rate from being examined by age and vaccination date. But then it happens somewhere, as recently happened with the Czech data set, that it contains almost everything you need to know about it, and that for an entire nation. That's what happens to them when they try to herd a bag of fleas.
Paraphrasing my tutor in basic statistics (only did the barebones necessary for political science):
"When you can create, or already have the data but don't use it or publish it, it means you already suspect what you are going to see and that you don't want things to be that way"
This was almost 30 years ago now, when we still had to use paper-publications and flip through huge tomes to find whatever it was we'd been assigned to find (number of first mothers who smoked during pregnancy in Småland outside of Kalmar city, f.e. and the data is still that granular - will full access you can compare block for block in a city).
The data is there, but it doesn't live up to what the politically correct truth is.
The headline suggest that the "societal climate" is partly responsible for tanking birth-rates. I was thinking this was an allusion to a depressing state of affairs in general. But no, totally wrong. What the author meant was that stubborn bosses and non-progressive enough society still don't get gender-equality at the job right. So basically men don't get enough parent leave. Also: both sexes should work 30 hours, thereby equalizing time working.
For non-German readers, welt.de is supposed to be a conservative magazine. The opinion held by the author, however, is outright socialist. I leave further conclusions to the reader.
Regarding welt.de: they seem to pursue a rather clever strategy: occasional forays into conservative or libertarian territory are quickly followed by a socialist white flag, in order not to get too much under fire. I have heard Norbert Bolz say something in this regard.
Interesting what you say there. Also didn't know this concept of the white flag. Prior to your comment I was only thinking that my comment goes to show that there are just two blocks or ideological camps, the right, and the non-right, which the convervatives and libertarians basically can be subsumed under at this point. But I wasn't granting professionals that they are strategising to some degree. Not that that is a winning strategy for conservatives, but under given conditions, people do their best to simply "navigate" their immediate circumstances.
You write: 'basically men don't get enough parent leave. Also: both sexes should work 30 hours'.
It's almost like this here in Norway, and recently, both the gov't and legacy media are 'baffled' to learn that 'despite as much welfare statism as practiced here', birth rates are going down:
It's just a cargo cult. Every week I see a headline like this where the so-called experts are 'surprised' by this, that or the other. As you also mentioned in the article linked, one can't find what one isn't looking at. So they haven't even a chance of getting the causality right. As we know from Thomas Sowell, it can be suspected that welfare policies often even create the outright opposite outcome of what was intended. No-one can be held accountable anyways, but that then gives the officials another reason to double down: Well, we need just more of said policy, for weren't that policy in place, the situation would be far worse!
I recall an email conversation with a Norwegian physician (a GP) who wrote a paper about this or that related to the Covid injections.
When I asked why he didn't cross-reference whatever content with the 'vaccination status' of those concerned--and it was 'explained' to me that it would a) take much longer, b) be more expensive, and c) take much, much longer.
In exchange, I was asked about my 'intentions', and when I told my interlocutor who I am, he stopped answering…
This is often how it works on the ideologically contaminated battlefields. It is reminiscent of one definition of insanity: doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.
Well, as Christian knows, I'm doing some writing about Norway every now and then, and what I find most curious (sic) is that Norwegian public health officials are calling the problem either 'ageing' or ignoring the baby bust right away.
Problem is, though, that much can be explained by a) 'feminism' in the North, i.e., women being able to chose more freely between 'family' vs. 'career' (although, if recent legacy media reporting is any guide, doubts begin to emerge about the over-generous Norwegian welfare system keeping more women from opting for 'family': https://fackel.substack.com/p/the-science-discusses-population)
Basically, a) led to b) higher ages of women giving birth (it's around 32 years now), which drastically reduces the 'fertility window' and hence the number of children per woman.
If anything, I suppose that 'Covid' and other confounders during the WHO-declared, so-called 'Pandemic™' contributed to b) as Norwegians were really good at following 'recommendations' and outdid some other countries in terms of 'voluntary' social distancing.
That reminds me that I had planned to link to your post because the alleged decline in sperm quality is another of these longer-term effects that can not adequately explain what happened in 2021-2023. You also had a quote from a colleague with respect to the link between wealth and fertility (less money, more children).
Regarding the higher age at birth, it might be of interest to dive into differences between numbers of (and age of mother at birth of) 1st, 2nd and 3rd+ children.
Well, sperm quality and motility trend downwards in virtually all 'western' countries, and in this regard, Norway (or Denmark, for that matter) isn't an outlier.
As to age affecting the number of children born, let's not forget that the average age of first parenthood for men, either; in Norway, it's 31-32 right now, only slightly lower than for women, and I'm certain that this, too, 'confounds' downward birth rate.
Thank you for this tip, which confirms my old fear: Don't investigate countries with special effects that you cannot oversee. In this case, the habituation to a bloated social system based on Norwegian petrodollars. You occasionally read about this in Germany, but I simply lack the "feeling" for what consequences this has.
Well, after having lived in Norway for four years (and ten years in Switzerland before that, from 2010-20: what a change), I can tell you one thing for certain:
The worst aspect of what you so aptly call 'the habituation to a bloated social system' is--it affects the mentality: people appear to be virtually devoid of any kind of initiative, mostly waiting for 'the government' to 'fix' things.
As regards Norway's 'black gold' (Switzerland, too, has that kind of problem, but it's a different, more literal kind of 'black gold'), well, in late November/early December 2023, state broadcaster NRK ran a piece that--entirely unironically--likened Norway to the emirates in the Persian Gulf. The argument: we're a filthy rich country with a small population and we've got oil and gas.
Problem is, most Norwegian households are heavily indebted (mortgages), and as my equally foreign-born neighbour quipped, 'it's a rich country with lots of poor people'.
As to consequences, well, sooner or later they will hit, and I suppose this kind of banquet will come all the more surprising due to the acquired inability and 'trust the system' attitude.
As a final aside, I was coordinating a 'summer school' in Copenhagen last week, and while our participants from (mostly) Switzerland had, occasionally, been to 'the North' for vacation purposes, they couldn't have imagined that Scandinavia isn't the land of plenty that they imagined it to be…go figure.
Just added Slovakia. Quite different situation there: declining population (of young women), yet increasing birth rates (until 2021); much younger mothers; 2022 decline less pronounced but 2023 decline stronger.
Wonderful, thank you! This is a well-founded refutation of the common narrative about dwindling women of childbearing age or older mothers. The latter in particular is also at least partially compensated for by artificial insemination. I had omitted to include age data because it was immediately clear that the decline in births began suddenly in 2022. It happened even faster than you can show in the annual data, namely within a quarter, as far as I can tell for Germany and Sweden.
Great work! As a swede, allow me to raise a few points about our data, which I'm sure insn't unique to us:
Abortion rates have remianed flat for ages, ca 30 000/year carried out. What this means is that even a slight dip in no. of pregnancies per year will have a greater impact, as abortion numbers remain the same, right? Is there a way to compensate or take this into account? My suspicion is, the drop-off in pregnancies -> births from pre- to post-injections is even greater than it looks to be thanks to abortions /not/ dropping in numbers.
The rates differ greatly between swedish women and non-european groups, in two significant ways: the swedish women have 2.1 children, later in life (think it's at age 30ish for the first, typically) and with a greater interval between each. Arab, afghan, negro women all have more than four children, often more than six, and at short intervals, also they have their first one at age 20 or so. Surely, this has some kind of impact on the data, apart from effecting slow genocide via migration and wombs? To get at such data however, you have to be an accredited researcher - data correlation to race/culture are collected, but are generally not made public, f.e. the data of the ethnic composition of prisoners is not made public, hasn't been for 20+ years now.
I'm sure you're aware of similar potential sources of small but cumulative errors, still all we can do is work with the data as known, so again I say good work!
(Apologies, for spelling, grammar, am in a hurry.)
Abortions in Sweden were lower in 2020 and 2021. I examined the issue in more detail for Germany because quarterly data is available here. In Sweden, only annual data is available.
https://ulflorr.substack.com/p/birth-decline-2022-2023-in-germany
Good catch, thank you for correcting!
More detailed data is available from Sweden, but not from SCB (Statistics Sweden) - you have to ask Socialstyrelsen for access to their records; from them it should be possible to see day-by-day but odds are you'd have to put it together from raw data, and that's if they release it to you in the first place.
Interesting, thank you. That's why I don't ask for data to be released. It may be that you don't get it and if you do, it's no longer up to date. I'm focusing on data that is released regularly, up to date, at short intervals and with little later corrections. The Swedish data, as far as available, is excellent in this. After all, the whole thing is also a news business. Whoever sees something first wins. ;-)
I also cannot really understand why some authorities sit on their data like a bird on its eggs. Almost all countries have done everything to prevent the death rate from being examined by age and vaccination date. But then it happens somewhere, as recently happened with the Czech data set, that it contains almost everything you need to know about it, and that for an entire nation. That's what happens to them when they try to herd a bag of fleas.
Paraphrasing my tutor in basic statistics (only did the barebones necessary for political science):
"When you can create, or already have the data but don't use it or publish it, it means you already suspect what you are going to see and that you don't want things to be that way"
This was almost 30 years ago now, when we still had to use paper-publications and flip through huge tomes to find whatever it was we'd been assigned to find (number of first mothers who smoked during pregnancy in Småland outside of Kalmar city, f.e. and the data is still that granular - will full access you can compare block for block in a city).
The data is there, but it doesn't live up to what the politically correct truth is.
I appreciate the diligent work done here. Coincidentally, I stumbled across this welt.de opinion piece here: https://www.welt.de/debatte/kommentare/article252573184/Eltern-Kind-Bei-diesem-gesellschaftlichen-Klima-wundert-die-gesunkene-Geburtenrate-nicht.html
The headline suggest that the "societal climate" is partly responsible for tanking birth-rates. I was thinking this was an allusion to a depressing state of affairs in general. But no, totally wrong. What the author meant was that stubborn bosses and non-progressive enough society still don't get gender-equality at the job right. So basically men don't get enough parent leave. Also: both sexes should work 30 hours, thereby equalizing time working.
For non-German readers, welt.de is supposed to be a conservative magazine. The opinion held by the author, however, is outright socialist. I leave further conclusions to the reader.
This fits nicely with the MPIDR paper: all about what people say, not what they do. Fun fact: the author, Nicola Erdmann, is the only child of a single mother: https://www.deutschlandfunknova.de/beitrag/einzelkind-nicola-erdmann-wuchs-ohne-geschwister-auf-und-findet-vorurteile-unberechtigt
Regarding welt.de: they seem to pursue a rather clever strategy: occasional forays into conservative or libertarian territory are quickly followed by a socialist white flag, in order not to get too much under fire. I have heard Norbert Bolz say something in this regard.
Interesting what you say there. Also didn't know this concept of the white flag. Prior to your comment I was only thinking that my comment goes to show that there are just two blocks or ideological camps, the right, and the non-right, which the convervatives and libertarians basically can be subsumed under at this point. But I wasn't granting professionals that they are strategising to some degree. Not that that is a winning strategy for conservatives, but under given conditions, people do their best to simply "navigate" their immediate circumstances.
You write: 'basically men don't get enough parent leave. Also: both sexes should work 30 hours'.
It's almost like this here in Norway, and recently, both the gov't and legacy media are 'baffled' to learn that 'despite as much welfare statism as practiced here', birth rates are going down:
https://fackel.substack.com/p/the-science-discusses-population
It's almost as if there's a 'marginal utility' to welfare statism…
It's just a cargo cult. Every week I see a headline like this where the so-called experts are 'surprised' by this, that or the other. As you also mentioned in the article linked, one can't find what one isn't looking at. So they haven't even a chance of getting the causality right. As we know from Thomas Sowell, it can be suspected that welfare policies often even create the outright opposite outcome of what was intended. No-one can be held accountable anyways, but that then gives the officials another reason to double down: Well, we need just more of said policy, for weren't that policy in place, the situation would be far worse!
I think you're right about this.
I recall an email conversation with a Norwegian physician (a GP) who wrote a paper about this or that related to the Covid injections.
When I asked why he didn't cross-reference whatever content with the 'vaccination status' of those concerned--and it was 'explained' to me that it would a) take much longer, b) be more expensive, and c) take much, much longer.
In exchange, I was asked about my 'intentions', and when I told my interlocutor who I am, he stopped answering…
Sad. But no surprise.
Exactly.
This is often how it works on the ideologically contaminated battlefields. It is reminiscent of one definition of insanity: doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.
Yes! Good point.
"If he reads this..." - He did, but is currently preparing for holiday. :-)
Questionable whether the other countries contribute any additional knowledge. Perhaps I will deal with this at a later date.
Permission granted... I myself also wanted to get this out before our holiday...
Well, as Christian knows, I'm doing some writing about Norway every now and then, and what I find most curious (sic) is that Norwegian public health officials are calling the problem either 'ageing' or ignoring the baby bust right away.
Problem is, though, that much can be explained by a) 'feminism' in the North, i.e., women being able to chose more freely between 'family' vs. 'career' (although, if recent legacy media reporting is any guide, doubts begin to emerge about the over-generous Norwegian welfare system keeping more women from opting for 'family': https://fackel.substack.com/p/the-science-discusses-population)
Basically, a) led to b) higher ages of women giving birth (it's around 32 years now), which drastically reduces the 'fertility window' and hence the number of children per woman.
I'm sure there's tons of other confounders, but in general, the alarm bells are off, with one op-ed even asking 'shall the gov't pay women to have children' a few months ago: https://fackel.substack.com/p/shall-the-govt-pay-women-to-have
If anything, I suppose that 'Covid' and other confounders during the WHO-declared, so-called 'Pandemic™' contributed to b) as Norwegians were really good at following 'recommendations' and outdid some other countries in terms of 'voluntary' social distancing.
That reminds me that I had planned to link to your post because the alleged decline in sperm quality is another of these longer-term effects that can not adequately explain what happened in 2021-2023. You also had a quote from a colleague with respect to the link between wealth and fertility (less money, more children).
Regarding the higher age at birth, it might be of interest to dive into differences between numbers of (and age of mother at birth of) 1st, 2nd and 3rd+ children.
Well, sperm quality and motility trend downwards in virtually all 'western' countries, and in this regard, Norway (or Denmark, for that matter) isn't an outlier.
As to age affecting the number of children born, let's not forget that the average age of first parenthood for men, either; in Norway, it's 31-32 right now, only slightly lower than for women, and I'm certain that this, too, 'confounds' downward birth rate.
Thank you for this tip, which confirms my old fear: Don't investigate countries with special effects that you cannot oversee. In this case, the habituation to a bloated social system based on Norwegian petrodollars. You occasionally read about this in Germany, but I simply lack the "feeling" for what consequences this has.
Well, after having lived in Norway for four years (and ten years in Switzerland before that, from 2010-20: what a change), I can tell you one thing for certain:
The worst aspect of what you so aptly call 'the habituation to a bloated social system' is--it affects the mentality: people appear to be virtually devoid of any kind of initiative, mostly waiting for 'the government' to 'fix' things.
As regards Norway's 'black gold' (Switzerland, too, has that kind of problem, but it's a different, more literal kind of 'black gold'), well, in late November/early December 2023, state broadcaster NRK ran a piece that--entirely unironically--likened Norway to the emirates in the Persian Gulf. The argument: we're a filthy rich country with a small population and we've got oil and gas.
Problem is, most Norwegian households are heavily indebted (mortgages), and as my equally foreign-born neighbour quipped, 'it's a rich country with lots of poor people'.
As to consequences, well, sooner or later they will hit, and I suppose this kind of banquet will come all the more surprising due to the acquired inability and 'trust the system' attitude.
As a final aside, I was coordinating a 'summer school' in Copenhagen last week, and while our participants from (mostly) Switzerland had, occasionally, been to 'the North' for vacation purposes, they couldn't have imagined that Scandinavia isn't the land of plenty that they imagined it to be…go figure.
Excellent work, excellent writing!
Great analysis CM!
Can you add countries like Poland or Slovakia?
They have a lower vax rate in the fertile age groups.
It would be a indicator of causality if they saw lower fert declines.
I will check after the holiday...
You know i had to ask for even more goodies ;)
Enjoy your holiday! look forward to seeying your update.
Just added Slovakia. Quite different situation there: declining population (of young women), yet increasing birth rates (until 2021); much younger mothers; 2022 decline less pronounced but 2023 decline stronger.
Great analysis CM!
Can you add countries like Poland or Slovakia?
They have a lower vax rate in the fertile age groups.
It would be a indicator of causality if they saw lower fert declines.