Europe's baby bust

A man walks his baby in a stroller in Stockholm, Sweden on September 24, 2020. (Photo by Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images)

Most visitors to Stockholm and other Scandinavian cities and towns marvel not just at the cities themselves but at the residents and their lives as well. They see a constant procession of moms and dads pushing strollers, taking their children to the playground, and meeting other parents for coffee – all during working hours. Nordic citizens can engage in such pursuits because new parents in Scandinavia have the right to lots of paid time. In Sweden, the parents of every newborn (or newly adopted child) are legally entitled to 480 days of leave. Ninety of those days are paid at a standard rate, and the remaining 390 days are based on the parents’ ordinary income. There’s also a 1,250 krona (about $121) monthly government subsidy per child; the amount increases from the second child. 

Such perks are unimaginable to parents in the United States. But the policies of countries like Sweden aren’t simply the result of the generous northern European social welfare model. They’re also a pragmatic way of ensuring that birth rates remain at sustainable levels. And Europe needs more of such policies. Around the continent, fertility rates are now dropping not just in the usual places – like Italy and Spain – but also in countries such as Poland and Lithuania. Europe as a whole is shrinking at a precipitous rate. In 2022, only 3.88 million babies were born in the European Union – just over half as many as in 1964, when the countries that today form the EU saw 6.4 million births. The same decline has been taking place in the United Kingdom, where just over 605,000 babies were born in 2022, compared with just over 875,000 in 1964. Unless European countries manage to increase their young populations, the continent faces a future in which there are not enough people to do the work that needs to be done, even if artificial intelligence succeeds in taking over some duties. It will also be a continent where there are not enough people to look after the older population (imagine senior citizens attended to by robots) and not enough people to fund the government through their taxes. And it will be a continent that faces rapidly increasing national security threats, yet its countries have nowhere near enough people to serve in their armed forces.  

Baby bust 

Every EU member state is required to offer all new mothers a minimum of 14 weeks of paid leave, while new dads get a minimum of two weeks. But a few European nations stand out for their generosity. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark have given their citizens generous parental benefits for decades now. And countries like Bulgaria and Ireland have more recently adopted similar policies. As these states have shown, supporting new parents is not just a matter of ideology. It’s a way of encouraging people to have children and thus to maintain a sustainable national birth rate.  

Demographers tell us that government incentives don’t result in more births. “When you work with politicians, you always see the same things. ‘Oh yes, we should have one month’s more paternity leave!’ All the scholars are like: you should, but it won’t change anything,” the Finnish demographer Anna Rotkirch told the Financial Times earlier this year. Indeed, human beings are not mechanistic entities that will respond predictably if condition A exists and the government adds B. Not even Hungary, where the government of President Viktor Orbán has made family formation a top priority, has found a winning formula. Even though couples receive generous grants and loans upon having children, the birth rate is still only 1.36 per woman. If countries want to increase their birth rates, they need to change their cultural attitudes toward families. Take the United States as an example: Despite limited government incentives – including, infamously, no legal right to paid leave for parents of newborns – the United States has a birth rate of more than 1.8 per woman. That’s because the country has a culture where having children is considered natural and positive. Other countries that lack such cultures can’t assume that healthy birth rates will simply materialize if they change their policies. Such countries need something more difficult too: a change in their cultures. 

A performer entertains children at Glastonbury Festival 2024 in Glastonbury, England on June 29, 2024. (Photo by Jim Dyson/Redferns)

To understand the role of culture, consider Japan, where despite increasingly urgent government incentives such as a 15,000-yen monthly payment per child, equal to about $103, birth rates have been declining for the past 15 years. In 2022, the Japanese birth rate dropped to 1.26 per woman. If the current trajectory continues, the population of the world’s third-largest economy will fall by about 30%, to 87 million, by 2070. By then, four out of every 10 people in Japan will be at least 65 years old. That’s a devastating future for Japan’s labor market, not to mention the country’s security, especially now that China is becoming more belligerent. Without enough young people to defend the country and work in its factories, tech firms, hospitals, waterworks, power plants, railways, and much else, Japan will grind to a halt. Though the government has been rolling out incentives for years, they’ve not had the desired effect – perhaps because, again, humans don’t respond to incentives in a Pavlovian manner, especially not in areas as fundamental as procreation. Instead, Japanese people – like those in every advanced economy – would be more likely to respond to a culture where having children is enjoyable and appreciated.  

Most of Europe is not in such dire straits – yet. But birth rates vary significantly throughout the continent, which means that some countries will face a far more sustainable future than others. Sweden has a birth rate of 1.53 children per woman. This is far from the replacement level of two children per woman, but it’s still much higher than many other European countries. Denmark’s birth rate is a respectable 1.55, while Ireland has a 1.54 birth rate. Slovakia is in the same range, at 1.57, and so is Hungary at 1.56 and Slovenia at 1.55, while the Czech Republic manages 1.64 and Bulgaria, 1.65. The United Kingdom looks somewhat less good at 1.49, and so does Germany at 1.46 and Poland at 1.29. At birth rates of 1.24 and 1.16, respectively, Italy and Spain face a decidedly shaky future. Fifty years ago, Italy had one person over 65 for every child age 6 or younger. Today the rate is 5.6 elderly people for every child under 6. Last year, only 379,000 children were born in Italy, down from 576,659 births in 2008. France, by contrast, can approach the future with some confidence, demographically speaking: It has a birth rate of 1.79, which makes it Europe’s champion, ahead of Romania at 1.71.  

Like the United States, some of these countries benefit from a long-standing culture that favors having children. In countries such as Sweden, that culture has had to be built in the decades since contraception made it easy to limit births, and it doesn’t just include paid postnatal leave: It also includes the right to paid time off to care for a sick child, the right to child care for working parents, good schools, and plentiful after-school programs. Together with the general messaging that children are welcome, such policies help build a culture where couples view parenthood as a positive experience. It’s not an accident that IKEA offers child care at its stores. 

Families at the "March of the Mummies" protest in London, England on October 29, 2022. (Photo by Guy Smallman/Getty Images)

People problems

The problems awaiting Europe’s birth-rate stragglers are painful. Italy must figure out who will support tomorrow’s retirees. Spain will have to figure out who will keep its economy going. All struggling European states will have to grapple with staffing their armed forces. For decades, at the very least since the beginning of the 1990s, economists and politicians have dismissed demographic concerns by pointing out that countries can simply import people from elsewhere, and that’s the policy that has largely been implemented across Europe. Germany, which has enormous problems recruiting skilled manual workers, operates a program that grants foreign workers fast-track professional certification. For many years, the United Kingdom dealt with a shortage of plumbers and cafe workers by filling those jobs with eastern Europeans. But the mass migration that resulted increased voters’ resentment of the European Union and helped trigger Brexit. 

In health care, European countries long ago joined the global trade in doctors, nurses, and nursing aides. Because wealthy countries tend to lose their doctors and nurses to even wealthier ones, they in turn fill their shortages with the citizens of less wealthy countries. The Philippines trains nurses for de facto export, while other developing countries simply lose nurses and doctors they thought would be serving their domestic population. 

Europeans have long held such a strong belief in globalization and open borders that, as Germany’s defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen proposed solving the Bundeswehr’s number problems by recruiting young people from other EU countries. But von der Leyen, who now leads the European Commission, conveniently forgot that virtually every European military also struggles to fill its ranks and would not appreciate Germany poaching their people. 

Culture changes

Solving demographic decline by relying on other countries’ workers is not a sustainable solution, especially now that emerging countries are becoming more self-confident and may try to prevent wealthier countries from poaching their workers. The reality is that workers won’t go to wealthier nations simply because those countries need them to. The workers get a say in the matter too, as do their governments. The leaders of emerging economies won’t appreciate European schemes to recruit their countries’ most ambitious citizens. Adding to the problem, China and Russia also face demographic decline and will compete with Europe for the same skilled workers. Open immigration policies won’t fix Europe’s demographic decline. Granting asylum to large numbers of people won’t do it either. Asylum is meant for people who need protection from war and persecution, and asylum-seekers may not be able to fill labor-market gaps. 

Pope Francis and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the "General States Of Birth" conference in Rome, Italy on May 12, 2023.(Photo by Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images)

Given Europe’s demographic problems, however, its countries could start competing for young people on the basis of parental leave provisions. That would be decidedly unhealthy for the EU, which only thrives if its countries work together. Women of child-bearing age, and their partners, need encouragement, and not just cheering on from their government. Families need a culture that embraces the practice of parenthood. The government incentives involved in such a culture change add a burden to the taxpayer, and in many European countries there’s a vigorous debate about the number of children for whom parents should receive government support. But the trickier part, which extends far beyond the competences of any Western government, involves making society as a whole more child friendly. A few generations ago, before Western countries industrialized and subsequently became wealthier, having a large brood was simply what one did, not out of choice but out of necessity (and, because of the lack of contraceptives, often by accident). Today, for people to want to have a child, let alone several children, employers, institutions, fellow citizens, and the rest of society must embrace the presence of society’s youngest members.  

The European countries that fail to raise their birth rates will be tomorrow’s losers – economically speaking, in care for the elderly, and when it comes to national security. Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, is so acutely aware of the problems demographic decline will cause her country that she has made increased birth rates a top priority. Meloni’s government even has a minister responsible for the birth rate, whose portfolio also includes families and equality.  

“We want to give Italians back a nation in which being a father is not out of fashion and being a mother is not a private choice but a socially recognized value. A nation in which everyone, men and women, can rediscover the beauty of becoming parents, of welcoming, looking after, and nurturing a child. A nation in which having children is a wonderful thing that doesn’t take anything away from you, that doesn’t prevent you from doing anything, and that gives you so much,” Meloni said in 2023, outlining her government’s plans to increase support for parents. Like many other Italian couples, Meloni and her former partner have one child.  

Meloni’s policies urgently need to bear fruit: If Italy doesn’t reach 500,000 annual births by 2033, it faces economic collapse because there won’t be enough workers and taxpayers to support the aging society. Sweden’s mothers and fathers enjoying lattes in the company of their newborns don’t represent a socialist nirvana but a necessary family culture.  

It takes a village to raise a child, the saying goes. That’s why government incentives alone will never convince people to have children. Though U.S. institutions certainly don’t make life easy for young families, there are enough community activities to bind young families together and make life as a parent of young children tolerable – enjoyable even. There are Little Leagues; there’s soccer training; there’s church. In Sweden, decades of government efforts – combined with an existing culture that views children favorably – have averted the kind of demographic hardship Italy and Japan are facing. More countries need to follow this family-friendly path.