Nordic countries’ generous family-friendly policies, including long parental leave and publicly subsidised childcare, mean they consistently rank among the best places to raise children. But the policies have not made them immune from the steep fall in women giving birth, which appears to be happening globally.
In 2024, Nordic fertility rates ranged from 1.25 children per woman in Finland to 1.91 in the Faroe Islands, according to Nordic Statistics Database. It is generally accepted that women need to have an average of 2.1 children to achieve stable replacement of the population.
Think-tanks such as Population Europe recommend family-friendly policies to arrest such declines. The advice looks and sounds a lot like the Nordic model. But the latest Nordic data show there have been sharp declines in fertility rates since 2010 ranging from 19 per cent in Greenland to 33 per cent in Finland, compared with a 12 per cent drop in the EU over the same period. So why have these countries’ egalitarian values and generous welfare states not stopped birth rates from falling?