The falling birth rate is a huge issue of our time. But what's the most effective way to tackle it – what should countries invest in? Parental leave? Baby bonus schemes? Assisted reproductive technology subsidies?
The Economist Impact recently published “”“Fertility policy and practice: a Toolkit for Europe”, a report that provides policymakers in Europe an evidence base that can be used when discussing policies to address falling fertility rates, and help people to achieve their desired family size.
Every day, politicians all around the world must provide answers and action to an endless array of issues; they choose what to prioritise, how to tackle each issue, how much money to invest in one policy or another. Most of the time the issues happen to be recurrent in time and space – which means that probably most of them have already been evaluated and tackled in the past, or in some other country. Access to such information can prove itself very useful: that's why toolkits – as in collections of expert skills, knowledge, procedures, and information for a particular topic or activity – are hugely beneficial to (serious) policymakers, as they state what's already been done, and has proved to work (or not); they provide a set of old and new ideas, from which policymakers can choose what they see fit, what matches their values and goals.
In the case of this Toolkit about birth rate, the very first research was focused on Asian countries – such as Japan, Taiwan, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and more – that are experiencing significant, often surprising demographic changes. The Toolkit about birth rate in the Asia-Pacific region was published by the Economist Impact in 2023, shortly followed by a scorecard: «We looked at what countries in that region are actually doing in practice, what policies do they have in place; we compared the same nine countries, giving more points based on if they had more generous family-friendly policies», explains Emily Tiemann, a manager with the Economist Impact’s Health Policy Team.
And then, last year, the research was expanded to Europe: «We thought it would be useful to look at European countries as well, and do a European Toolkit». Part of the Toolkit's content is about «identifying which policies worked, which policies had the biggest evidence base behind them, which were more economically viable». And the other part is collecting comments and ideas from a panel of experts.
Nine of them were involved in the European Toolkit: Norwegian professor Arnstein Aassve from the Department of Social and political sciences at the Bocconi University in Milan; Willem Adema, senior economist from the Social policy Division at the OECD Directorate for Employment, labour & social affairs; David Coleman, emeritus professor of Demography at the university of Oxford; Bart Fauser, emeritus professor of Reproductive medicine at the university of Utrecht and University Medical Center Utrecht; Geeta Nargund, founder and medical director of abc IVF and CREATE Fertility, and also Lead NHS Consultant for Reproductive medicine at St George’s NHS Trust; Satu Rautakallio-Hokkanen, general director of Fertility Europe; professor Anna Rotkrich, director of the Population Research Institute at Väestöliitto, the Family Federation of Finland; Czech professor Tomáš Sobotka, deputy director of the Vienna Institute of Demography at the Austria Academy of Sciences; and our very Eleonora Voltolina, founder of this initiative, The Why Wait Agenda, and editor-in-chief of the association Journalism for Social Change.
«We wanted the Toolkit to be shaped with regional expertise, to engage people who are involved in the field of fertility and family-friendly policies in Europe. I think that's really the core of a lot of the research that we do: it's very evidence-based, but almost more importantly is having that engagement with quite a diverse group of people who are important voices in this space, top of their field, and have been exposed to others within this discussion», says Tiemann: «So they can share with us what they've been hearing, what they've been seeing, what they identify as some more “European-specific” problems. The important thing is to have a variety of perspectives, of countries, so that we can have the most insights as possible».
That's why the panel includes experts in demography, health care professionals, associations representing infertile patients, and activists. With their voices, data and analysis, they try and demystify the overly abundant rhetoric about birth rate, and state how important this topic is, right there at the top with democracy and climate change as one of the most challenging and impacting issues of our time. «Sometimes you talk to people over declining birth rates and they’re, "Oh, that's such a good thing! You know, for the environment"», Tiemman agrees: «The biggest thing that they don't realize is that the demographic shift is the most serious thing that we're gonna be dealing with in the future. People are growing older, as the life expectancy is increasing, and there's not enough of the younger generation to sustain the older generation. We have to be thinking long-term: this is a generational problem, and the sooner we start to address it, the sooner we'll be able to maybe see some shifts and slowdowns».
These Toolkits about birthrate have been supported by Merck, a large science and technology company active especially in the businesses of life science, healthcare, and electronics. «Merck has an interest in why people are choosing to have children later, what that means for society, for the economy. It's something that they've been looking at for quite some time: we started working with them on this topic back in 2018», says Emily Tiemann.
The Economist Impact is part of the Economist Group, along with three other divisions: the well- known magazine, of course, and then the Economist Intelligence Unit «which is more data analytics, subscription-based, for companies», as Tiemman summarises, and the Economist Education Foundation «that provides courses and educational resources». The Economist Impact is «the client-sponsored research arm of The Economist. We're kind of a think tank, but we also have a lot of media abilities». The four divisions are «all under the same brand, and we all have the same guidelines: independence goes across the whole company».
So even when the topic is chosen by a company – in this case, Merck – and the research is paid for by them, the output «is completely editorially independent, based on the research. That means it's trustworthy, because it's not influenced in any way by any other forces out there», as Tiemann points out: «We have very strict guidelines as to how we work with people, the kind of work that we accept to do: we want to only do things where we'll be seeing impact. We have a influential global audience that we speak to: the Economist brand brings a lot of trust to people».
The ultimate goal of the Toolkit is to show policymakers «the barriers that people are facing, and what can be done to try and mitigate some of those barriers and close the fertility gap that we're seeing». The fertility gap is the imbalance between how many children people would like to have and how many they actually have: almost everywhere in Europe research shows that people would like to have slightly more than two children, but the total fertility rate in Europe is currently only 1.53 children per woman.
«We want to try to encourage policymakers to design policies in a way that allows women and families to have the number of children that they want, so they're not facing barriers in that quest», Emily Tiemman notes: «The barriers can be financial, they can have to do with the workplace, they can be around assisted reproduction. What can be done to try to help?». The Toolkit suggests a series of policies, evaluating their effectiveness: looking «at the evidence behind different policies that have been implemented over the course of a few years» and showing numbers and «real evidence behind why some of these policies might make a difference».
And of course, there’s the economic angle, «often one of the most important thing in the eyes of policymakers», in Tiemman's words: «We want to show that these policies actually have a return on investment. Like workplace policies: they allow women to go back to work and to contribute to the economy – or otherwise they maybe would have to stay at home. Same with the assisted reproduction policies: more babies in the future means more contributions to the economy».
Governments need to shift to a long-term mindset, for «if they implement a policy now, they're not necessarily going to see results in the next few years: these things obviously take a long time to come to fruition, especially if we're talking about cultural change», says Tiemman, confirming that typically, «one of the main problems that we have when we're dealing with these kinds of policies is the fact that they are long term».
There are, as a matter of fact, a few policies that have proven to be a little bit more immediate: for instance, «a lot of studies show that providing childcare provides immediate return on investment, because it means that then women can go back to work», states Tiemman, «...and contribute to taxes! So there are some ways in which it can be a little bit quicker: but that can't be the only way to compare the policies, because that doesn't mean that implemented child care is more important than more access to fertility treatment. So we have to just try and continue sending the message that we're not going to be seeing [the results] immediately, but it's still worth it to implement these policies, and eventually there will be a change». Politicians «just have to have that little bit of openness to waiting, I guess».
The Toolkit provides an overview of what has already been done in Europe and other Western countries to improve birth rates, rating the effect that these policies have had on fertility rates in practice. It also provides a call to action based on four key recommendations: prioritise long-term thinking; invest in comprehensive, complementary and sustainable family support services; encourage research and collaboration; and promote and prioritise gender equality. «Although the challenges caused by declining fertility rates in Europe are significant, they are not unbeatable if we know the barriers to parenthood that we are trying to close» reads the Toolkit: «By adopting a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to family and fertility policy, European countries can create an environment that supports families while addressing the demographic challenges of the future». The Toolkit is available for download (in English or French) here
Comments