Covid in Norway: Live Births Nosedive (-10%) in 2022, Marking a Record Low Unseen in the Past 25 Years

Let's see how long it'll take politicians, public health officials, and legacy media to figure out what could possibly drive this decline--as well as 10% excess all-cause-mortality

Norway is a quite peculiar place, esp. in terms of the time-lag between things happening and Statistics Norway reporting on it ‘officially’. Live births is just such an indicator that is typically reported about half a year later (or even later than that), but this year may be quite different for a very specific reason: a massive decline of -10% of live births.

On 3 Jan. 2023, Bergens Tidende brought a very short update on ‘live births’ in the region, and it read as follows (my emphases):

The number of births at the Women’s Clinic [Kvinneklinikk, the university hospital’s specialist ward] in Bergen fell by almost 10% from 2021 to 2022.

In 2022, 4,320 children were born against 4,709 in 2021.

The Corona year 2021 brought an increase of births around the country, yet this rise was short-lived.

The number of children born at the Women’s Clinic last year is the lowest in recent history. Since 2010, when there were just over 5,000 births, the number of live births was fairly stable until 2017, when the decline began.

At Voss [a nearby small town of c. 15,000 inhabitants located about 1.5 hours east of Bergen], there were 403 births in 2022 compared to 441 in 2021.

Nationally, Statistics Norway sees the same tendency. In August, updated birth statistics for the country came out, and in the first half of the year just over 26,000 children were born in Norway; it is the lowest number of births in 25 years.

The situation being quite dire and unprecedented in recent memory, it is hardly surprising that state broadcaster NRK picked it up; here’s a slightly abridged and lightly edited (for clarity) piece that went live just yesterday, 5 Jan. 2023 (my emphases; emphases mine in bold, emphases in the original are given in Italics):

The Birth Rate Plummets: Senior Doctor Asks Parents to ‘Plan’ Less

Maren and Petter planned their first child as one of the increasingly few children born in 2022. Senior doctor Anne Eskild believes excessive planning has become a problem for society.

Far fewer children were born last year than the year before.

Although the figures for December are not yet clear, there is likely to be a record-breaking drop in the number of births from one year to the next. Except for 2021, there has been a downward trend in the last ten years.

4,666 Fewer Births

There were 48,133 children born in Norway at the end of November last year. That is 4,666 fewer than at the same time in 2021. In total in 2021 there were 56,676 births.

During November 2022, 3,543 children have been born. This is the lowest number so far last year, according to figures from the Medical Birth Register.

Here is an overview of children born [in each county], prioritised from most to least up to and including November 2022 [note that December is still missing; glory to electronic health-records]:

• Viken: 10,543 [Oslo metro area]

• Oslo: 7,836

• Vestland: 5,809 [home to Norway’s second-largest city, Bergen]

• Rogaland: 4,715

• Trøndelag: 4,265

• Vestfold og Telemark: 3,183

• Agder: 2,790

• Innlandet: 2,748

• Møre og Romsdal: 2,156

• Troms og Finnmark: 2,001

• Nordland: 1,911

EDIT: added this map from Wikipedia to make it easier for non-locals to identify the areas

Child Support System Favours Certain Individuals

‘The development is particularly serious in the [northern] counties’, says Anne Eskild of the Women’s Clinic at Akershus University Hospital [in Oslo].

In Finnmark, the number of births has almost halved since the 1990s. And the only place where the number does not go down is central Austlandet [the suburbanised Oslo metro area, and that is due mainly to immigrants having more children than Norwegians].

As a reaction, local governments introduced free kindergartens in Troms og Finnmark from around the turn of the millennium. Eskild is curious to learn if this measure can help [reverse the trend]. She believes the main problem is a system of financial child support that favours middle-aged women in well-paid jobs, who are not so fertile anymore:

Thus, it is meaningless, for it suggests that the existing system of child support is best for 50-year-olds. It should be best for those who are most fertile, for you have to play along with biology.

Politician [Kjersti] Toppe: ‘Disturbing Figures’

Minister for Children and Families from the Centre Party [Senterpartiet] Kjersti Toppe says child support for both students and other women who are not entitled to parental allowance has improved in recent years,

But it still favours those who are already well-off and have good salaries. More and more people are taking advantage of the scheme. This development is a serious problem.

I think it is disturbing that the birth rate is so low. In the government, we are particularly concerned about the decline in the outlying areas.

Asked what the government will do to reverse the trend of few births in the country, Toppe responded:

We want to facilitate an active children’s policy. We are looking at the development in the decline in births and will go into those numbers to gain more knowledge about its cause. Then we will make the financial priorities we can.

Asked if Toppe was saying that financial support for those who want to have children but who are not in the workforce should be increased, she answered:

We are waiting for an explanation that will offer us more knowledge about what could be the cause of the trends we are seeing now.

Changing One’s Mind Every Day

25-year-old Maren Victoria Pettersen and 27-year-old Petter Næss of Bodø [in the North] welcomed their son Johannes at the beginning of last year. They wanted to have children and took the if-happens-it-happens approach, and ‘then it happened a little faster than we had imagined’, says Pettersen.

What do they think about having more children?

‘We change our minds about it on a day-by-day basis. We ask ourselves if we should get more children right away or whether we should wait until he [their son] has become a little more independent’, says Næss. ‘But we want at least one more’, adds Pettersen.

What do they think about there being fewer births here in the area, but also on a national basis?

‘It doesn't exactly apply to us, but it probably has something to do with centralisation and the fact that you have to travel far to get help’, Næss replies. [I’ll comment on these ‘infrastructural’ troubles in more remote areas in the bottom lines]

While he points to the desire to first get done with education and work, Næss also points to the economy.

Having kids is very expensive. There is something about us having to provide for them, too. And help them enter the housing market when they get older.

In the Past, Multiple Children Were Added by Chance

Minister for Children and Families Kjersti Toppe from the Centre Party calls the situation serious [alvorlig].

Anne Eskild, Professor of Gynaecology and Head of the Department for Women’s Health at Akershus University Hospital, does not like the development either: She says there are far fewer people today who get pregnant ‘by chance’.:[I’ll have something to say on this too, cf. below]

It may be controversial to say, but it is not necessarily so crazy to get pregnant by chance.

She explains this by saying that the general attitude today is that all children should be planned. And this is hardly possible now with subsidised contraceptives for young women that is often not user-controlled and has few failures. Excessive planning can be a contributing factor to young women giving birth to fewer children, adding that

Of course, there are differences between unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.

Eskild further refers to exaggerated expectations today that one can become pregnant at an advanced age.

Maybe one’s plans don’t include children for a long time, and then, in other words, it may be too late when you want children.

It’s Worth It

In Bodø, the parent couple Pettersen and Næss are clear on this issue. In any case, there will be one more child, even if it is both difficult and expensive.

It is easy for us who have children to say that it is the best thing in the world to have. Perhaps others think that this is a great strain more than the great love one can have. And while it’s worth it, you don’t know until you’ve got one.

---

Bottom Lines

First, infrastructure and outlying areas. This is an age-old issue in advanced countries, that is, how much of the built environment will (can) be kept up and running when the going gets tough and/or circumstances change (such as, e.g., demographic changes). There’s no ‘good’ solution, in particular as any large-scale mitigation measure will inevitably increase centralisation and control, which are both bad outcomes. I suppose that, whatever any gov’t does, there’ll be always local-regional ‘cores’ that remain, i.e., areas where enough local production and consumption will continue no matter what. I daresay that it is incumbent on everyone to ensure he or she is living in such an area, that is, if you’d like to continue living with a modicum of (local) co-rule, autonomy, and, yes, self-respect.

Second, family allowances and state subsidies for parents. As a father and parent, I can relate to these issues; sure, I was in Switzerland when we welcomed our first-born child, but here’s something that I find appalling, both intellectually as well as in terms of self-respect: you know, there’s hardly any parental leave in Switzerland (mothers get a total of 12 weeks of ‘protected time’, or Mutterschutz, which breaks down into 4 weeks before giving birth and 8 weeks thereafter; yes, you read that right: mothers are expected to go back to work two months after giving birth; as of today, there’s also two weeks, I think, of paid parental leave for fathers, but it’s a very recent ‘innovation’), and a lot of these issues come down to economic considerations (yes, it’s expensive to have kids, but so is partying and hanging out in bars: it’s about decisions and priorities)—but there’s also something else to think about: anecdotally, I can tell you of many women I met in Switzerland who left their jobs to stay home with their new-born children. So, whining about this or that allowance and state subsidy, in particular with the apparent sense of spoiled entitlement, is something that I find intellectually dishonest, morally appalling, and, above all, the wrong way to look at the issue of childrearing. In short: stop complaining, grow up, and do things.

As an aside, third, a brief note on the availability of universal childcare, in particular of the fully paid for by the government kind: it’s a shitty idea, start to finish, for children are meant to be with their parents. There’s no way that anything even remotely resembling parental care and affection can be found in the best kindergarten on this planet; as I said, the Swiss experiences of women foregoing ‘careers’ and ‘jobs’ to stay at home is, in my opinion, a much better indicator of humanity’s essential characteristics than asking others to pay more taxes; see also the first point about infrastructure. In addition, having children comes with loads of responsibilities, for oneself, for one’s partner, and for the offspring; stop complaining, people, and get moving. (As an addendum, I grew up in Austria, another one of these high-tax high-subsidy countries, very much comparable to the Nordics; I can’t tell you how annoyed I am by now every time I hear ‘complaints’ about this issue—after all, just to cite but one example, a mother in Austria may chose up to 2 years of maternity leave, the employer must accept that decision [which also may be changed by the mother, which must also be accepted], and employers must also accept it if mother wishes to change her employment range from full-time to part-time. Please refer to my second comment about childcare in Switzerland for further insights into my opinions on this subject.)

Finally, let’s talk about what the above piece callously omits: the injection status of the population. Now we have -10% of births, a few weeks ago we learned about roughly the same percentage of excess mortality in 2022. What a coincidence, eh? We also know that public health officialdom ‘knows exactly how many doses’ were administered throughout the country, so, here’s my US$ 64,000 question for anyone with more than one working brain cell: why not talk about the implications of the mass injection campaign with these damned modRNA products? I mean, it should be dirt-cheap and easy to do (heck, I’d volunteer to do it), find if there’s plausible cause for concern (say, reduced sperm motility, increase in terminated pregnancies, stillbirths, etc.), and go public (I dare you, Institute of Public Health). Oh, you’re afraid to do so because you fear the consequences of your actions, dear politicians and public health bureaucrats? What a pity, I almost feel for you. Or not, because this is what we pay you to do. So, for the love of God, please get off your couches and get to work; my tax money is waiting.

Shame, shame, shame. Still, fool me once, shame on you (politicians, public health officials, pencil-pushers)—shame me more than that, shame on me.

Let’s see how smart and able to learn the Scandinavians are.