Shall the Gov't 'Pay' Women to Have Children?
As birthrates decline to dangerously low levels, legacy media in Norway calls on the gov't to 'do something' about this
Long-term readers know that I have a soft spot for stupid things said out loud, even (esp.) if they are well-intentioned. And today, I’m ‘happy’ to present you with just on of these things.
By way of background, I refer you to my pieces on precipitously declining birth rates in Norway in 2022 and the continuation of this downward trend in 2023:
And it is at this point, where we turn to more ‘current’ events. As always, translations and emphases mine, as are the bottom lines.
Act I: Official Numbers Don’t Lie, Right?
To set the stage, we’ll visit the premises of Statistics Norway once again to learn the following about ‘population growth in 2023’:
The figure for immigration was 86,600, and has only been higher in 2022, new figures from the Population Registry show. Of these, 33,000 were Ukrainian nationals, a slight increase from 32,300 the previous year. With 34,000 emigrations, net immigration—immigration minus emigration—was 52,600 [i.e., approx. 63% of all ‘net immigration’ in 2023 was due to Ukrainian refugees]…
From 3,600 to 65,800 Ukrainian citizens in two years
In two years, the number has increased from 3,600 to 65,800.
Thus, Ukrainians are the second largest group of foreign nationals in the country
58.7% of Ukrainians are women, compared with 49.5% among the rest of the population. They are also younger than the rest of the population: 81% of Ukrainians are under 50, compared to 62% of the rest of the population.
If you look at the parts of the country where the Ukrainians live, they also stand out from the rest of the population. For example, 13.7% of Ukrainians live in Oslo and Akershus and 15.4% in the three northern Norwegian counties. For the rest of the population, the figure is 26.2% in Oslo and Akershus, and 8.7% in Northern Norway.
In this way, Ukrainians have also contributed to a great population growth in Northern Norway¹.
‘In the first three quarters, around half of those who immigrated to Northern Norway were Ukrainian nationals. The number was highest in Nordland, where Ukrainians accounted for 60% of immigration’, concludes Haug. Final moving numbers for 2023 will come on 12 March.
¹The section has been changed, the last sentence was removed on 1 March 2024.
I haven’t changed anything, but SSB did. If you’d go to the Internet Archive, this is the part they changed:
Thus, the Ukrainians have also contributed to a great population growth in Northern Norway, where an increase in immigration has resulted in the highest population growth since 1970 in Nordland, 1986 in Finnmark and 2016 in Troms, with the county boundaries valid from 1 January 2024.
I note, in passing, that this section was edited with no reason given by SSB on 1 March 2024. I furthermore note that I figured out what was so ‘outrageous’ about this a week earlier without resorting to anything but logic and deductive reasoning:
We may therefore conclude Act I by pointing out that official number-crunchers lie by omission.
Act II: What About the Birth Rate, then?
Well, here we can see a bit less in terms of these shenanigans, but perhaps this is but a function of time elapsed. In a recent (13 March 2024) news item, SSB discusses last year’s birth rates and total fertility numbers:
In 2023, 51,980 children were born in Norway. That’s 500 more than the previous year, new figures from the birth registry show.
Based on the total number of births and the number of women aged 15-49¹, Statistics Norway calculates the total fertility rate (TFR). It is a measure of how many children women will have on average in their lifetime, given that fertility patterns remain the same. TFR is used to say something about the fertility trend in society.
‘Despite an increased number of births, the total fertility rate (TFR) was lower than last year [2022]. The main reason for this is the large immigration from Ukraine in recent years. Last year, these women had significantly fewer children than on average. If we calculate the TFR without including Ukrainian women, FRT would have been 1.41’, the same as last year, says Espen Andersen, senior advisor at Statistics Norway.
The large immigration from Ukraine affects the overall fertility of immigrant women to an even greater extent. In 2023, the TFR for immigrant women was 1.46, a decrease from 1.49 in 2022.
¹ Numbers were changed from 45 to 49 on 13 March 2024 at 14.50.
So, a bit over two weeks after I posted the above analysis, we receive confirmation of my argumentation courtesy of Statistics Norway. How nice is that?
What’s even more interesting is this, I’d argue: we know that the settlement of Ukrainians up north is due to the gov’t having created a special economic zone using tons of taxpayer money to support this endeavour. Before too long, either because they’re returning to Ukraine (which I doubt) or because these resettled refugees will obtain papers that’ll permit them to move elsewhere (which is what I’m convinced will happen), the North will continue to empty.
Elevated Fertility in the North
Fertility remained unchanged or decreased in most counties. The exception was in Nordland and in Troms and Finnmark. The increase was greatest in Nordland, where the number of births increased by around 7% and TFR increased from 1.43 in 2022 to 1.51 in 2023. In Troms and Finnmark, TFR increased from 1.35 in 2022 to 1.40 in 2023.
In recent years, fertility has been highest in Rogaland and lowest in Oslo. This was also the case last year. In Rogaland, the TFR was 1.57, while 1.25 children were born per woman in Oslo. Unchanged compared to 2022.
See what I mean? It’s a one-off effect, in particular as this is quite out of the ordinary relative to long-term trends in birth rates (see my above-linked piece based on population data going back to 1972).
The costs for this one-off effect are extraordinarily high, and they will be short-lived.
More dangerous for Norwegian—and Western societies in general—are the ultra-low birth rates (expressed in TFR) in the heavily urbanised Oslo metro area: 1.25 children born per woman in Oslo.
And if the official commentary about the quick assimilation of ‘immigrants’ to low Norwegian birth rates are any guide, ‘replacement migration’ isn’t going to fix this:
And it is at this point that we’ve seemingly come full-circle on something much bigger: by just how much does gov’t spending affect this?
Act III: Journos Discover that Socialism Doesn’t Work
At this point in time, we turn to an op-ed by Stig Arild Pettersen, which appeared in today’s Bergens Tidende. Careful readers may remember that this is the bourgeois-liberal daily of Norway’s second-largest city, firmly establishmentarian, and part of the large Schibsted Group that virtually owns most non-government ‘private’ media in Scandinavia.
Come, read on with me and see what happens when explosive content is printed:
It is Time to Pay Norwegian Women to Give Birth: It is Much More Expensive Not To.
By Stig Arild Pettersen, Bergens Tidende, 18 March 2024 [source]
Norwegian women and Sindre Finnes have one thing in common: they don't listen to [former conservative-in-name-only PM] Erna Solberg.
On New Year's Day 2019, the then Prime Minister looked deeply into the camera and spoke in clear language to the thousands at home: ‘Norway needs more children!’
At that time, Norwegian women gave birth to an average of 1.6 children during their lifetime. It was a record low, and far below what is needed to maintain the population [which would be 2.11 children per woman].
On Wednesday [13 March 2024] came the conclusion for 2023: Norwegian women will now have only 1.4 children.
In 15 years, Norway has gone from having one of the highest birth rates in Europe to being well below the average. Nowhere has it fallen as quickly.
This means that Norway is facing bleak times: in a few years, we will lack both taxpayers to cover the government's expenses, and people to take on the jobs that cannot be solved by artificial intelligence.
There are several reasons why the birth rate is falling
Good integration is one. Immigrant women now give birth to almost as few children as women of Norwegian origin.
Self-realisation [I’d call this narcissism] is another. If you want to get a master's degree, go on a circumnavigation of the world, and become a middle manager before your first child, you probably won't get number two or three until you're too old. Therefore, the birth rate now also falls for women between the ages of 35 and 39.
Women in the rural areas have their first child earlier than women in the city. Thus, they also get more. But young women leave the rural areas and never return.
In the city, they are faced with housing prices that make it impossible for most people to buy an apartment with room for more than two children, although many people want a third.
The fact that fewer people choose to have a third child is actually the most important reason why the birth rate in Norway is falling.
The big break came in 2009, the year when the global financial crisis hit. It is one of several indications that falling birth rates have something to do with the economy [no shit analysis; also, that’s nothing new; I’d rather point to something else: excessive regulation and high taxes, both of which also impinge on ‘the economy’].
Minister for Children and Families Kjersti Toppe (Centre Party) believes it is incomprehensible that Norwegians have fewer children than the average in the OECD, when Norway has so many good welfare schemes [this is the true bombshell here: Jordan Peterson was correct].
And even if cheaper daycare and a few hundred Norwegian crowns extra in child benefits are good for families with children, it obviously does not influence the decision to have more children to any significant extent.
Therefore, we have to think differently.
Bottom Lines
I think this is what it looks like when a dam is about to break.
While I doubt that the current Children and Families Minister understands anything about the problem, I consider it almost ironic that it is a member of the current centre-left gov’t that—unwittingly, it seems to me—spills the beans: socialistic welfare measures aren’t working.
Norway’s generous welfare schemes are legendary, and they’re failing.
The gov’t ‘cannot understand’ why throwing more entitlements are people isn’t working, so please let me help you out on this one:
Not every decision undertaken by a human being is tied to money or otherwise directly motivated by material interests (just ask any parent or people caring for loved ones).
Thus follows that just because ‘the gov’t’ returns a bit more of what one pays in taxes beforehand, it won’t affect the above issue; if anything, I consider it hilarious that the ‘idea’ here seems to be for the state to pay women to have kids comes as a ‘new idea’ proposed to the centre-left gov’t. By the way, whose children would these be?
Another issue are high taxes and excessive regulations that bedevil the socialistic Nordics: why not just go ‘full Orbán’ and award women with children generous income tax deductions? They seem to at least have worked to the degree that Hungary’s fertility rates stopped dropping (also, it would be hilarious for a self-righteous centre-left gov’t to do as the notoriously vilified ‘far-right’ Hungarian gov’t has done). Doing so would also reduce red tape as less tax money is taken from people.
I could go on here, but I’ll conclude on this note: whatever they decide, as a stand-alone measure it won’t work.
Virtually everything here in Norway is over-subsidised and there are no consequences for (economic or other) failure. Just throw some more money at whatever problem in the hope of people not getting pissed off.
I consider such schemes—in whatever form the may or may not arrive—as part of a long-term solution. We’d also have to rethink retirement schemes in particular, as well as the extent of Western ‘welfare states’:
Hard choices will come before too long; there’s little runway left before mass immigration will overwhelm Western welfare systems, destroy whatever Western excellence is still there, and turn our countries into shitholes.
Hard questions must be asked, and honest answers must be given.
Everything else is window-dressing.
Act accordingly.
If you want to see what happens when a government pays people to have children, look no futher than Australia's 'baby bonus.' People were given thousands in cash payments per newborn. It didn't really work no matter how high they set the payments, so now they are flooding the country with unsustainable levels of immigration crating a massive humanitarian crisis.
As the other commenter said - it's a function of urbanisation. Australia is highly urbanised and we are the mice in the experiment now.
Eh. If you have high levels of urbanization, you will get low birth rates. There are a few urban hellholes out there (Gaza comes to mind) that have high birth rates. Now show me an urban non-hellhole (anywhere in the world) that has high birth rates. (And birthrates are dropping even in the hellholes.) Cities have never been able to reproduce themselves and have been able to grow only due to immigration. Back in the bad ol' days, it was because children kept dying of disease (cities were notoriously unsanitary). Nowadays, people just don't make babies. If you force them to, you get Romania-style disasters. I really don't think it's a coincidence that of all the, lemme see, presidents, prime ministers, heads of police (secret and otherwise), etc. etc. from the former Eastern Block, the dude who implemented that particular disaster was the only one facing a firing squad after 1989. When you force people to have children that they don't want to have, it turns out badly. Very badly. Just ask the Romanians. And non-punitive subsidies have only a small and non-lasting effect.
I don't pretend to know exactly why this is, but I suspect part of it is a mammalian instinctual reaction against overcrowding. BTW, someone just posted about this in a comment on another 'stack:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
Those selfish mice (ahem).
As for mass immigration: that'll just push native birthrates down even further. Obviously. And it would seem that long life expectancy does that, too. Especially the long *sick* life expectancy, i.e. the amount of time people spend alive, but with significant health problems (and therefore unable to work, no matter what the official retirement age may be). After all, those old dependents compete with babies (including the unborn ones) for resources. Pensioners vote. Babies (especially the unborn ones) do not. But no economy can survive as one giant nursing home, so expect life expectancy to drop, too. Democracy (what's left of it) is likely to go away, too. A country that consistently prioritizes the needs of the old over those of the young (which is what any democracy with an inverted age pyramid will inevitably end up doing) cannot survive very long.