Old Europe is aging more and more, while fewer and fewer children are being born. This puts great pressure on health care and pension provision, among other things. This is reason enough for scientists to ask young people why they do not start or have children at a late stage. Important theme: uncertainty about the future.
Demography scientist Daniele Vignoli showed a total of eight hundred young couples from Italy and Norway to headlines about the economy. He wanted to find out to what extent negative media reports affect people’s choice whether or not to have children.
No house, no job
Some of the 1,600 people surveyed, who were aged between 20 and 40, said their own financial problems – notably a lack of work or a good home – prevented them from feeling ready to have a child. Others mentioned an increased fear about the state of the world. “Our results make it very clear that reproduction is influenced by narratives about the future,” says Vignoli, a professor at the University of Florence. Fear for the future leads more and more people in Europe to postpone having children or not want them at all, according to the researcher.
The birth rate in Europe is currently 1.53 births per woman. The Netherlands is just above that with 1.55. For comparison: in Italy the birth rate was 2.4 in the 1960s, now it is 1.25. With these figures, the population is shrinking, not counting migration. And that while Europe is aging strongly: last year more than half of Europeans were over 44.4 years old, more than a fifth was over 65.
crisis everywhere
Young people are growing up in a world that is grappling with numerous crises, such as global warming, a war on the edge of the continent, a pandemic and an economic recession. It all leads to fear and uncertainty, but the researchers were particularly interested in the effect of the financial crash in 2007-2008 on the birth rate.
Normally, an economic dip causes a temporary decrease in the number of births, but the banking crisis heralded the start of a falling birth rate that did not recover. According to the researcher, that was when the era began in which people experience uncertainty about the future.
Rise of AI
According to employment expert Anna Matysiak, this is also due to the automation and emergence of artificial intelligence (AI). “Changes in the labor market have important consequences for the birth rate because they create uncertainty,” she explains. “But the need to retrain and adapt also takes up time that could otherwise be spent raising children.”
In her research, she showed that people with professions that threaten to become obsolete due to technology are more likely to choose to postpone having children. These people have to look for other work or spend time on training. Such changes can destabilize family life. Couples who experience such challenges at work are also more likely to break up.
Positive effect of working from home
Working from home, which has become fashionable since the corona pandemic, can actually lead to couples having more than one child, says Matysiak. However, the growing flexibility at work has not yet ensured that people start having children earlier.
Matysiak and Vignoli think that the birth rate will only come under further pressure in the future, especially because the rapid rise of artificial intelligence creates a lot of uncertainty. Both researchers argue that couples need more government support, both at work and at home, to give them enough confidence to start or grow a family.
Time for action
For example, there should be more training and advice to keep people at work. More rules are also needed to protect employees against excessively long working weeks and to improve work-life balance.
In any case, it is certain that something has to be done, as the European population is only getting older and increasingly dependent on younger generations. Declining birth rates ultimately lead to uncertainty for everyone. “Demography defines our past, but it also defines our future,” concludes Vignoli.
2023-07-30 14:03:11
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