Finland: helping the world's happiest people have families
New essay collection from Boom x SMF
The Social Market Foundation – a cross-party think tank - and Boom have today co-published a new essay collection featuring prominent voices on the left and centre-left challenging the idea that concerns about falling birthrates are the preserve of conservatives. Contributors include: Anna Rotkirch, Demographic Rapporteur to the Finnish Government and leader of Finland’s Population Taskforce; David Lawrence of UK Day One; and Shreya Nanda of Labour YIMBY and advisor to the Women’s Budget Group.
Below is Anna’s essay on the report she was commissioned to produce for the Finish Government and their strategy to help more Finns have the children they want. You may know Anna from her viral interview with the FT last year on declining fertility in the Nordics. Click here for the full essay collection!
Phoebe
Finland: helping the world's happiest people have families
Anna Rotkirch
With a total fertility rate of 1.25, Finland is infamous for leading the Nordic baby bust, with people in Denmark, Norway and Sweden all also having fewer children. As demographic rapporteur to both the previous and current Finnish governments, I have shaped and seen unfold Finland’s increasingly vibrant policy debate about how we can best support our fellow citizens to start and expand their families.
Whereas in other countries, population policy can be a fringe and politicised issue, in Finland it is emerging as a cross-party and cross-governmental agenda. In 2020, the Social Democrat Prime Minister Sanna Marin, representing a centre-left coalition government, commissioned me to publish an expert report on population policies, called “recovery of the birth rate and longer life expectancy”. After she lost power, the new government, a centre-right coalition, continued with a population programme. It appointed a working group with representatives from the Prime Minister’s Office, Finance Ministry, Education Ministry, and a range of experts, convened by the Minister of Social Affairs and Health.
In 2024, I was commissioned again to explore potential policy responses for the government to consider, this time with an emphasis on fertility policies. There were three crucial principles I wanted to make sure were reflected throughout this second report:
Many steps. First, that there is no single “solution” or “quick fix” to the shifts and trends in the lives and childbearing plans of young Finnish adults that are leading to falling fertility. The drivers of these trends are broad and global, cultural and social, and not due to any specific family policy measures. Yet that does not mean nothing can be done to help Finns have the families they want.
Childwishes. Second, all policy responses must centre on people’s desire to have children. In Finnish this can be beautifully captured in one word – lapsitoive – which literally means “childwish”. That means making human rights and sexual and reproductive rights the cornerstone also of our fertility policies. This is not about lobbying people to have children, but helping those who want families to have them: the health and wellbeing of children and adults must always come first.
Separate family formation and expansion. Third, we must differentiate between policies that support people to have children at all, and those that encourage people to have second, third or subsequent children. Although fertility decline is driven by childlessness, too many pronatalist policymakers seem to think all they need to do is support families who already have children.
Finland already has policies in place to support parents with children, but our birth rates have plummeted. They would have fallen further and faster without those policies in place, but now we need to respond with measures to help people to start their families. This is why both the analysis and the recommendations in my report are split into two parts: those addressing the situation of childless young adults, and those addressing the situation of families with small children.
With these three points in mind, I outlined 20 specific proposals, ranging from the low-cost and uncontroversial to the expensive and societally transformative: let each political party have their pick. The policies can be sorted into five buckets:
A national conversation. Our first two proposals call on the government to consult with young people to better understand the obstacles they face to having children, and to lead on a broad social discussion about the causes and consequences of Finnish fertility decline.
Helping Finns to become parents, earlier. Three proposals focus on the timing of when Finns start families. This includes ending pregnancy discrimination so that working women feel less pressured to delay motherhood, and extra financial support for women who have a first child before the age of 30, perhaps through the tax system or student loan reductions.
Fertility awareness and education. Five policy suggestions are concerned with improving fertility awareness, education and counselling. This means improving fertility education in schools and the healthcare guidance available, but also more investment in services that can help people to have children, like IVF.
The wellbeing of young adults. Two proposals highlight the need to better support young adults, including in terms of mental health but also in their relationship with the online world, including developing screentime guidelines and helping young adults to develop better interpersonal skills.
Parents with young children. The final seven proposals focus on supporting young families, from creating family-friendly workplaces and improving services surrounding pregnancy and birth, to developing a system to compensate parents for the work of caring for their young children so that having and raising a child does not reduce income or pension savings.
All the above proposals flow from some deficit or change that has been identified by scholars as involved in the delaying of parenthood and the decline in fertility. Yet we must stress that there is little if any robust evidence for how well these different proposals would work in the specific circumstances of Finland today – that is another reason that a holistic, multi-lever policy response is necessary.
To my delight, the report did ignite real debate in Finland. Our record-low birth rate was arguably the dominant social topic of autumn 2024, triggering commentary and critique, lamentation and amusement. A host of new proposals or improvements to those suggested in the report have also been presented. In other words, a rational and promising response to major social change.
The Nordic nations remain global leaders in generous family policies, in individual well-being, and in gender equality. Finland is, of course, known as the happiest country on earth. Provided political and societal awareness, we have all the ingredients to solve the current baby bust in an empowering, life-affirming way.