There are also fewer babies born in Switzerland this year than last year. The downward trend continues across Europe – with three exceptions.
December 17, 2024 10:27December 17, 2024 10:30
Sabine Kuster (text), Mark Walter (data)/ch media
Birth rates are falling – and not just in Switzerland.Image: Westend61
Once you have a baby, you are out. And not just in the short term. The latest birth statistics in Switzerland show that the birth rate will continue to decline in 2024, at least until September. This comes after tentative data showed that Swiss women would have even fewer children in 2024 than in 2023.
Although provisional figures are often as low as 6 percentage points, even taking this into account the decline is still slightly wider compared to 2018-2020.
Changes in birth rates began in late 2020, about nine months after the pandemic began. In most European countries, there was an initial tangle. This situation was particularly evident in Portugal, Spain and Italy, where the epidemic was already severe at the time.
In some countries with good security conditions, lockdown quarantine life will be followed by a small baby boom in 2021, such as Denmark, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Birth rates also recovered for a year in France and the Czech Republic.
Then the birth rate began to fall in a way it hadn't seen since the birth control pill breakthrough in the 1960s: almost everywhere – even in France, which has one of the highest birth rates, at 1.8 children per woman – Birth rates will begin to decline in mid-2019. -2022.
Just not in three countries, but in the three countries where the epidemic was most severe in 2020 and where the initial decline in the number of births was the largest: Italy, Spain and Portugal. This is not surprising since at least Italy and Spain rank at the bottom of Europe with 1.2 children per woman.
Many demographers have been scratching their heads over this. This isn't just a European phenomenon: birth rates have also fallen in Canada and Japan, although not as much. Even in South Korea, which has a record low fertility rate (0.8 children per woman), the number has now dropped further to 0.7. Only in the United States, the largest country in the West, does the epidemic or other crises appear to have had no impact on the relatively high birth rate of 1.6.
One explanation might be that the effect of inflation on birth rates in the United States is also shorter and smaller. A 2022 study in the United States pointed this out. Therefore, the impact of the war in Ukraine on the country is likely to be less. Ultimately, the differences with Europe cannot be conclusively explained.
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