German Gov't Agency Ponders Fertility Decline, Calls it 'Remarkable', Compares it w/Sweden: 'Unprecedented Fertility Development

To be fair, correlation is one thing, establishing causation quite another

Some ‘news’ on the Covid front has emerged in Germany of all places. The Bundesinstitut für Bevölkerungsforschung (BiB, something like Federal Agency for Population Research) has come out with a new ‘study’. Entitled, ‘Fertility declines near the end of the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence of the 2022 birth declines in Germany and Sweden’, it was written by Martin Bujard and Gunnar Andersson and it appeared in the agency’s very own BiB Working Paper 6/2022.

From the paper’s abstract (my emphases):

Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, several countries faced short-term fertility declines in 2020 and 2021, a development which did not materialize in Scandinavian and German-speaking countries. However, more recent birth statistics show a steep fertility decline in the aftermath of the pandemic in 2022. We aim to provide data on the unexpected birth decline in 2022 in Germany and Sweden and relate these data to pandemic-related contextual developments which could have influenced the post-pandemic fertility development. We rely on monthly birth statistics and present seasonally adjusted monthly Total Fertility Rates (TFR) for Germany and Sweden. We relate the nine-months lagged fertility rates to contextual developments regarding COVID-19 mortality and morbidity, unemployment rates, and COVID-19 vaccinations.

The seasonally adjusted monthly TFR of Germany dropped from 1.5-1.6 in 2021 to 1.3-1.4 in 2022, a decline of about 14%. In Sweden, the corresponding TFR dropped from about 1.7 in 2021 to 1.5-1.6 in 2022, a decline of almost 10%. There is no association of the fertility trends with changes in unemployment, infection rates, or COVID-19 deaths. However, there is a strong association between the onset of vaccination programmes and the fertility decline nine months after of this onset. The fertility decline in the first months of 2022 in Germany and Sweden is remarkable. Common explanations of fertility change during the pandemic do not apply in its aftermath. The association between the onset of mass vaccinations and subsequent fertility decline indicates that people adjusted their behaviour to get vaccinated before becoming pregnant, as societies were opening up with post-pandemic life conditions. Our study provides novel information on fertility declines in countries previously not affected by any COVID-19 baby bust. We provide a first appraisal of the COVID-19-fertility nexus in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic.

Hold the horses, ladies and gentlemen, because the abstract is, in a way, betraying the much more measured contents of the paper, to which we now turn. Note that TFR stands for ‘Total Fertility Rate’.

Fertility developments in relation to previous trends: Monthly TFRs in Germany and Sweden in the 21st century

Between the years 2000 and 2014 Germany’s seasonally adjusted TFR was constantly hovering at a level between 1.3 and 1.5 children per woman (Figure 1). From 2015 to 2021 it was on an upward trend from a (seasonally adjusted) TFR level of about 1.5 to that of about 1.7, and peaked in December 2016 at a level of 1.65. Another peak occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic in March and October 2021 with a TFR level of above 1.60. However, in the first months of 2022 there was an abrupt decline in birth rates so that the seasonally adjusted TFR reached a level of 1.38 in February 2022, 1.38 in March 2022, 1.39 in April 2022, and 1.48 in May 2022 (without seasonally adjustment: 1.26, 1.35, 1.31, and 1.49).

Note that I’ve kept the same red marker in both figures to illustrate the differences between Germany and Sweden.

The TFR trends in Sweden during the first two decades of the new century were markedly different from those in Germany: Sweden’s TFRs first increased during the first decade of the 21st century, then declined during its second decade. The initial increase amounted to a recuperation of the depressed fertility and postponed childbearing that occurred during the 1990s. The latter decline coincided with fertility declines in other countries in Northern and Western Europe as well as in the Anglo-Saxon countries. It was driven by declines in first-birth
rates of women and men in couples (Ohlsson-Wijk and Andersson, 2022). However, the fertility patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic were largely similar to those in Germany. During the pandemic, the previous fertility decline came to a halt and Sweden’s TFR hovered at a seasonally adjusted level of 1.65-1.71. As in Germany, it subsequently showed a drastic decline in its monthly TFR when the pandemic came to a halt: During the first months of 2022 the Swedish TFR fell to a markedly depressed level of around 1.5-1.6.

Changes in the number of live births per month during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic

In contrast to many other European countries, Germany experienced no birth decline in the first months of 2021. There was even a small increase of about 2.9 % in the total number of births in 2021 as compared to the previous year; the increase was particularly pronounced during February and March and during October to December 2021. In contrast, the subsequent decline in the number of births during February and March 2022 was 14.3 % and 13.7 % as compared to the same months in 2021; when compared to the five-year average of 2016-2020, the corresponding decline was between 8.2 and 11.1 % in the first four months of
2022 (Table 1).

The patterns of monthly increases and subsequent declines in the number of births in Sweden in 2021 and 2022 were very similar to those observed for Germany. The declines in the number of live births in early 2022 were also impressive, but somewhat weaker than the relative declines observed for Germany.

So far, so good, eh? At this point, I do wonder when people from Germany will compare one year-old data (it’s now May 2023) with the current one and go: oh, how do we ‘splain that?

In discussing fertility in relation to ‘health crises, economic hardship, and vaccination programmes’, here’s what the BiB has managed to come up with:

There is a clear correlation between the onset of vaccination programmes and fertility declines that occurred nine months later. In Germany as well as in Sweden, the vaccination campaigns with mass enrolments for a first vaccination reached its peak in April, May, and June 2021, followed by a wave of second vaccinations with its peak between May and August the same year. (Two vaccinations were considered being fully vaccinated.) The implementations of these programmes in both Germany and Sweden coincide very well with a distinct change in fertility levels exactly nine months later. The fertility rates remained at a reduced level during the entire first half of 2022.

Oh, look, what they’ve found. Curious, isn’t it?

And here’s how this is spun:

Analyses based on Swedish data reveal that the decline in fertility during early 2022 was confined to several birth orders, including those of second and third births (Lundkvist, 2022). The latter trend change makes a reversal of the situation during the pandemic itself when parents of one and two children sometimes took the opportunity to speed up their childbearing with the arrival of a next, already planned child (Neyer et al., 2022). To speed up continued childbearing during a situation when many parents were confined to their homes could sometimes be a rational use of parenting time. This would amount to a version of the cocooning effect in childbearing behaviour that we discussed in Section 2. When societies during 2021 opened up again, this cocooning effect was no longer at play. Taken together, the observations of parity-specific fertility changes during 2021-2022 suggest that a large part of the post-pandemic fertility change can be ascribed to behavioural changes in reaction to societies opening up to less home-centred life circumstances than those prevailing during the pandemic.

I’d almost buy that argument—if it weren’t for the world-renowned Nordic proclivity to provide that kind of ‘cocooning effect’ via welfare state measures implemented well before the ‘pandemic’ hit. Also, note that, while earlier in the paper, the authors note the less-stringent mandates in Sweden vs. Germany, that kind of argument doesn’t hold much, if any, water to begin with.

However, there could initially also have been a more direct role of the vaccination programmes as such on childbearing considerations. During the course of vaccination programmes, recommendations for pregnant women changed in the light of increasing evidence of the security of vaccines for pregnant women. In January 2021, there was no official recommendation for the vaccination of pregnant women by the permanent vaccination commission of Germany (Robert Koch Institute, 2021a). It lasted until September 23rd the same year when this commission gave an explicit recommendation for pregnant women to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and labelled them as an ‘explicit target group’ (Robert Koch Institute, 2021b). The lack of initial recommendations could have propelled some prospective mothers to postpone childbearing until after getting a vaccination for themselves.

Maybe that was the case, maybe not. I’d point to the odd choice of word—’security' of vaccines for pregnant women’—instead of, say, ‘almost risk-free’ or ‘safe and effective’. Yet, the authors chose ‘security’, as in, the way I read it, ‘having secured enough doses to widen recommendations’.

Discussion

This study has demonstrated a remarkably strong and very sudden drop in fertility in Germany and Sweden in the first months of 2022. The number of live births dropped by some 15% in Germany and close to 10% in Sweden, as compared to the fertility levels in previous years. The fertility decline was very different from the slower pace of change that usually characterize fertility developments. It happened as societies were to open up after two years of COVID-19 related restrictions on people’s lives. More precisely, the fertility decline occurred some nine months after the implementation of broad-based vaccination programmes for the general population in Germany and Sweden. In the wake of these interventions, the seasonally adjusted monthly TFR of Germany dropped from a level during 2016-2021 of 1.5-1.6 children per woman to a lowest-low fertility level of 1.3-1.4. In Sweden the decline occurred from a slightly higher level of departure but with a similar direction and magnitude. These declines are remarkable for two reasons: First, Germany and Sweden are countries that experienced no fertility decline during the course of the pandemic itself, in 2020 and 2021. Second, both countries reached fertility levels that were lower than what had been experienced for many years.

Other well-known explanations of fertility change during the course of the pandemic, such as the impact of health-related and economic factors seem not to be associated with the timing of fertility decline in 2022. Based on the descriptive associations presented in this study, we interpret the post-pandemic change in childbearing behaviour as a reaction to the changes in life circumstances that were anticipated as societies were to open up to non-pandemic conditions. In some cases, there may have been a more direct effect of the vaccination programme as such, as some prospective parents may have postponed a decision to have another child until after securing a vaccination for themselves. [this year’s front-runner for the prize of the most inane ‘scientific’ interpretation, because it’s a contradiction in the same paragraph]

There are several limitations of our study. The data for Germany are still preliminary and may be corrected later. However, such corrections will not change the extent of fertility decline in any substantial manner. The estimation of monthly TFRs and the seasonal adjustments that we apply also depend on assumptions of seasonal patterns that may be challenged. The biggest limitation is that our interpretations are based on descriptive associations that do not account for the many individual-level characteristics and other contextual factors that may also be at play. Further research based on individual-level data will provide better insight into the nature of the observed fertility decline, when such data are available. It will, for example, be crucial to find out whether the fertility decline occurred with equal force for parents and non-parents alike, and whether different socio-economic groups contributed to the same extent to changes in behaviour that we have observed in this study. [I’m for one wondering how, exactly, one would find out about ‘fertility decline…for parents and non-parents alike’, as the latter group would be a quite hard-to-study comparison group, eh? I could imagine that looking at, say, sperm count, motility, and inability of people who want to become parents as an indicator, but, since I’m not a ‘scientist’ working with the BiB, I suppose these thoughts will not make it to the authors…]

This study still provides valuable data and insight on a new and entirely unanticipated fertility development in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It remains to be seen whether these developments are of a short-term nature and how fast fertility trends in Germany and Sweden will return to their pre-pandemic patterns, which for Germany was running in an upward direction and for Sweden with a downward trend.

Bottom Lines

There’s not a lot to add, other than, perhaps, that this is a supremely moronic attempt at gaslighting the public, that is, those who actually read the paper.

Some of the comments and findings would be, frankly, laughable, at best, if it weren’t such a serious issue to begin with.

If anything, the main take-away appears to be the following two aspects:

• Authorities have noticed ‘a new and entirely unanticipated fertility development’. If only people would have known about it before rolling out these injections to esp. women of child-bearing age. Oh, wait, that happened, hence the above qualifies as obfuscation-with-intent, i.e., a piss-poor manoeuvre to deflect the inevitable blame, incl. legal consequences.

• Contradictions and silly statements abound in the paper, which I’ve pointed out above. Yet, there’s but one actually helpful notion in the paper—and that is that while the decline is unprecedented in such a short timeframe, the number of live births isn’t. Basically, the drop in fertility rendered moot all gov’t activism to the contrary of the past generation. Nudging one’s way out of this serious problem for the continuation of our societies (‘business as usual’) won’t cut it.

If there’s a silver lining in this—and I’ll freely admit its a very thin one that, on top of everything, is very hard to spot and exceptionally analytical—it might be that after 40-50 years of ‘neoliberalism’ = putting one’s career ahead of child-bearing/rearing—we might be in for significant changes in labour markets, macro-economic policies, and mass behavourial change as gov’ts—IF THEY REACTED RATIONALLY (I know…)—would now move towards making any number of the following changes:

• try to get women to have children much earlier, i.e., early-to-mid-20s, which has the potential to significantly increase the odds of both conceiving and opting for more than one child, effectively putting an end to the career-induced one-child policies embarked on by Western gov’ts for generations;

• look at Hungary, for example, which offers a 25% reduction of a mother’s income tax for every child; whatever one might wish to think of Mr. Orbán personally, that seems to have helped, that is, at least before the ‘pandemic’ hit, to slow fertility decline;

• consider making our societies more family- and children-friendly—this one goes out esp. to my friends and readers in Germany, I guess. Stop the wokefied BS and ‘return’ to more ‘traditional’ policies, including esp. the BS peddled by state and non-state broadcasters beholden, at this point in time, to massive ESG virtue-signalling.

• doing so entails massive changes to virtually everything, ranging from the way higher education and careers are structured to modifying out labour markets towards more flexibility, as in: take, say, an undergraduate degree, have a child or two, and still have good chances to go back to college, obtain a graduate degree, and get a decent job in one’s mid-thirties or the like; the US graduate admission-and-labour market ‘system’ worked much better than the more rigid European systems in the first place, i.e., there’s no real need to re-invent the wheel.

There’s much more to all of the above, of course, but this post is already very long.

As an ‘added benefit’, let’s also consider the political impact of such policies: the Greens would be considered pariahs, and that’s an unambiguously good thing, even if the pro-family and pro-children policies wouldn’t work in the medium-to-long run.

What else do you think might help?