Why do the Nordics have a low birth rate despite their government providing all parents with free childcare and parental leave?

Question

Supporters of free childcare, parental leave and other parental perks often claim that the lack of such benefits is the root cause of low fertility rates in the US and other developed nations. And yet, Nordic countries have low birth rates too despite having free childcare and other progressive policies supported by Left wing parties in other nations.

How can this discrepancy be explained? Examples of such claims are:

• Daycare difference? Quebec fertility rate outpacing Ontario’s
• Lack of paid family leave, support at work partly to blame for 30-year low in fertility rates: Experts
• Millennials Aren't Having Kids Because It's Too Expensive
• People Aren’t Having Kids Because It’s Way Too Expensive
• A decades-long broken economy screwed over millennials, and their decision to delay having kids is fueling America’s historically low birth rate

Answer 1

The main factors that are seen as contributing to a lower birth rate include:

• Improved educational opportunities for women
• Lower child mortality
• Access to effective contraception
• Social welfare and pensions
• High costs of raising children
• Cultural factors, such as expectation of family size

(sources: 1 2)

Providing "parental perks" can offset some of the high costs of child rearing, but it has little effect on the other factors. In particular, in Nordic countries there is a functioning health and social welfare system, so firstly, few children die. And secondly children are not used as an insurance policy against old age. Culturally, the Nordic countries have been Lutherian protestant, with no religious code against contraception.

Other factors being equal, increasing the costs of child rearing does tend to lower the birth rate. But even with the many "perks", it is still economically rational (in a narrow sense) to remain childless.

Answer 2

The Nordics have Among the Highest Birth Rates in Europe

So it looks like those perks must be working.

Denmark, Sweden, and Iceland all have birth rates of 1.7 births per woman. (Norway and Finland are lower at 1.5 and 1.4, respectively, but 60% of the population of the Nordics are in Denmark, Sweden or Iceland.)

So the only European countries with higher birth rates are Turkey (1.9), and France, Ireland and Moldova (1.8).

European countries with lower birth rate than the best of the Nordics include: Belgium, Hungary, Latvia, Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the UK (1.6), Germany, Austria, Poland, Serbia, and Switzerland (1.5), Greece and Portugal (1.4).

European countries with birth rates lower than all the Nordics include: Italy, Spain, and Ukraine (1.3).

Answer 3

Childcare is heavily subsidized in Finland, though there is an income-dependent fee. Typically around 50 EUR but up to about 300 EUR per month.

The paid parental leaves dictated by law and collective work agreements are perceived to cause increased costs to employers. This can reduce the willingness of employers to offer long-term employment contracts to young people, especially young women. Many people want to have a stable job before getting children, so while the parental leave makes being a parent easier, it can postpone becoming a parent.

A 2022 study by association Family Federation of Finland questioned people on effect of 30 common reasons to postpone or to not have children at all. As a representative summary, here are a few of the more common reasons for age group 20-34 and percentage who said that it affects a lot:

• Want to do other interesting things (38%)
• Studies not complete (22%)
• Lack of suitable partner (22%)
• Focus on work career (20%)
• Home too small (20%)
• Family economic situation (17%)
• Difficulties of combining work and parenthood (17%)

The policies seem effective in the regard that economic means are not the limiting factor for most people. On the other hand, people can rely on the government to provide basic care of the elderly, and having children is by no means a necessity.

Answer 4

Believe it or not, having children is hard - both physically giving birth, and taking care of them until they're adults. Most people who can give birth would, given the full freedom to choose, either significantly limit the number of times they do it or not do it at all. Having lots of children, on the other hand, is usually a result of:

• lack of access to or knowledge about birth control and abortion
• lack of social safety nets combined with belief that children will take care of you in old age
• societal and legal norms that allow exploitation of children as free labor
• pressure from family, partner, or society/culture to have many children
• internalization of belief that one's self-worth is tied up in having children

As such, it's completely expected that societies with social safety nets, good education, and respect for the rights of women and children will have relatively low birth rates. There's nothing bad or unusual about this.

Answer 5

These countries do not have lots of peasants or fishersmen who can work without much education, or none at all. Comparably many are middle class, qualified workers for whom raising the next generation "just like me" is expensive. Humans are different from dandelions. They plan only as many children as they can support all the way up to the professional maturity, and many understand "maturity comparable to mine", not some low paid unqualified work.

Of course, a housewife makes childraising cheaper while the kids are small, but when the time for the university comes, two parents may pull more.

The fact that a country provides reasonable help is by itself not a proof that without this help the birth rate would suddenly skyrocket.

Answer 6

I think your question is putting the cart before the horse in asserting that the "normal" expectation would be for the birth rate to rise because daycare is subsidized. That's a claim that needs verification. Asking us to (dis)prove the negative is not the correct approach here.

Firstly

People say "I'll have more kids if I have free childcare" on surveys

I think this is a misrepresentation of a more correct "I'll be more inclined to have kids if I have free childcare". The latter does not attest to an increase in the amount of children, only a more eager approach to deciding to have them.

If you consider that people tend to stabilize financially as they age; the effect might merely be a matter of what age you have your children, rather than what number of children you end up having.

Secondly, the assumption that removing a restriction therefore triggers something is a logical fallacy.

My car won't start. The fuel tank is empty. I fill up the fuel tank. Will the car now start?

You cannot judge this accurately because you have not considered if there are any other blockers to the problem that you have not yet addressed. Your question is rooted on an assumption that the cost of childcare is the only reason people are not having the children that they want to have, and you've provided no evidence to support that claim.

Thirdly, any assumption that the amount of children that are born is therefore indicative of the amount of children that people wanted to have is affected by people who have children by accident or who do not engage in (accurate) pre-emptive family planning.

You cannot look at the amount of children being born and use this as a measure of how many children people want, nor how people's plans with regards to the amount of children they want to have might change over time.

Fourthly, you claim the birth rate is "low". Compared to what?

The only surefire comparison to make would be a comparison between the same culture/country/... either having or not having subsidized childcare. It seems like you're assuming an equality in birth rate between different cultures/countries/...

While there are some reasonable comparisons that could be made when you account for the variables, I'm not convinced that you've accounted for the differences between different cultures/countries/... enough that you can conclude that one specific key concern (childcare subsidization) lies at the heart of a difference in birth rates between the different cultures.

To put it differently, just because my neighbor earns more than me does not necessarily mean that he has (or should have) a car that costs more. There may be myriad life circumstances that lead to me and my neighbor spending our money differently, and it's not just related to income.
Similarly, who says that the Nordic countries don't just start from a significantly lower birth rate than what you're comparing it to if you assumed neither had subsidized childcare, and the subsidization actually does increase the birth rate, just not particularly in a way that it overtakes the other region you're trying to compare it to?

Overall, I think your premise is flawed. It's built on an assumption that is not backed up by any evidence that I've seen, it oversimplifies the problem space by omitting several key concerns that are not at all addressed by childcare subsidization (or lack thereof), and it uses a metric that is at best inaccurate.

Answer 7

Others have pointed out already that the fertility rate of the Scandinavian countries is actually among the higher ones in Europe.

This means that the policies and possibly other factors do work, to a degree. Here is an animated chart which shows that the Scandinavian countries had a higher birth rate than most of Europe for much of the past 15 years, even though the difference is lower today.

There is a very accessible policy paper for the IMF which discusses the main drivers of the choice to have a child, or not. The paper isn't long; I'll give a few key points here.

• Traditionally, there are strong negative relationships between fertility and
  • income
  • female labor force participation
  • female education.
• The usual explanations are that parents focus on quality (for a single child), and the higher "opportunity cost" in lost income when women have (especially high-earning) jobs.
• Sweden and Denmark are explicitly quoted as examples where high female employment rates coexist with relatively high fertility, due to the availability of child care.
• Contributing factors include parental leave policies, tax policies, and the length of the school day.
• A difficult job market for returning mothers is a factor.
• Fertility is higher "in countries where where fathers engage more in childcare and housework". In countries with more traditional gender roles (the authors mention Japan) fertility is comparatively lower.
• Social norms outside the household, like (dis)respect for full-time working mothers, play a role as well.
• The inverse relation between female education and fertility has recently reversed in some places and for some groups. For example, U.S. women with more than 16 years of schooling (which basically amounts to a postgraduate degree, if I'm not mistaken) have now on average more children than those with "only" 16 years. Since the opportunity cost is not lower, the other factors above come into play. Generally spoken, highly educated women have children if that does not end their careers.
• This realization leads to concrete policy suggestions regarding workplace regulation and childcare. Investments here will lead to sizeable medium- an long-term benefits.

Answer 8

Because children doesn't make you happy

https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/think-having-children-will-make-you-happy

and the Nordic countries are the most individualistic in the world

https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/images/Map2023NEW.png

Ask yourself, why would an adult want to spend a lot of time with a three or thirteen year old child? They are a PITA, in different ways, depending on their age, and they don't give an real "value" in return (as opposed to a e.g., a partner, friend or a dog).

Since Nordic societies are so individualistic the balance tips to not having, or having fewer, children. Imagine that being forced to spend a lot of time with a three year old bears an emotional cost of -10 but the emotional cost of going against those around you, in a traditional society, is -20 then the rational choice is to have a child. However, if the cost of going against those around is just -5, the rational choice changes.

This is easy to prove: the expectation on men compared to women to have children is much lower in, basically, all (?) societies around the world - and consequently, it is much more common for men to not have children. In the Nordic countries that expectation gap is probably smaller than in most other countries, hence women and men make similar decisions.

More sources:

https://web.archive.org/web/0/http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/padr/2005/00000031/00000003/art00001

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-015-0413-2