Denmark: Women having more children

Danish women are giving birth to more kids than just 20-25 years ago.  With an average of 1.85 children per women Denmark is at the top of Europe's fertility list.  Other Scandinavian countries also top the list, while German women are down at the bottom with 1.32 children on average.

Denmark Statistics reports that women are becoming mothers at a steadily older age and that the average age for first time mothers is now 28.9.

Though the women are having more children, the number of children has gone down since 2000.

While Danish women are having more children, the average number of children by non-Western immigrant women has dropped dramatically from 3.41 in 1983 to 1.97 children per woman today.

Source: Berlingske (Danish)

7 comments:

MASS said...

Interesting.. but why do you think this is the case? for both Danish women having more children and immigrants having less ?

Snake Oil Baron said...

Some people suggest that while education, increasing prosperity and literacy cause total fertility rates to fall, a combination of egalitarian gender roles (i.e. men helping out with the kids and dishes) and flexible labour markets allowing women to leave work for a few years and still have a chance of finding a job convince women to have the second or third kid that they want to have anyway. Nations with more traditional gender roles like Italy and Japan or more rigid social programs which try to force women to stay "empowered" in full time work whether they want to or not, seem to have gone to lower total fertility rates than even other industrial nations.

In other words, the demographic transition between high and low birth rates as a population gets educated and prosperous can be mitigated by gender equality and liberty in the labour market. Liberty and equality are not things that Islamic culture excels at and it could end up being a hard transition for them to keep their birth rates up in the face of 3 generations of modern living.

But then, that is just a proposed theory at the moment. More research needs to be done.

FreeSpeech said...

snake oil baron

interesting theory, corroborated by what I saw during the last two years in Switzerland: Highly educated women below 40 giving birth all over the company - and coming back to work full time or part time.

The most popular names for newborns in Switzerland are
Sara, Lena, Emma, Nina, Noah, Tim, Nathan, Luca, Lucas

Anonymous said...

Actually, women in Italy aren't having babies because they aren't getting married and aren't moving out of their parents' houses. They just can't afford to. Even though the Euro is strong, the Italian government is so screwed up and corrupt that inflation is ridiculous, plus the job market sucks because Italy has failed to keep up with the rest of the Western world in terms of technology and education. And it has a circular effect whereby the lack of a younger work force combines with immigration and the ridiculous welfare state just exacerbates theoriginal problem. I love Italy but it really is a country in decline. But I got 2 fellowships last year because I study computer-mediated communication and Italian so the US Department of Ed. apparently thinks that people like me can help, which I would love to do when I finish my education, provided I would be getting paid in Euros, since the dollar is weak and almost worthless when Italian inflation is a factor. Mark Steyn says that it's not German women at 1.32 but Spanish women at a rate of 1.1 who are at the bottom of the European fertility list, but I think those stats were from 2005. That's awesome that Danish women are having more kids, but 1.85 isn't even replacement rate. 2.1 is. So get to breeding, Europeans (I hypocritically say ten minutes after popping my birth control pill at the tender age of 29).

Anonymous said...

Oh, I forgot to add that fertility rates are dropping all over the Muslim world, not just among Muslims in Europe, believe it or not. For what it's worth, since Yemen will still have a higher population that Russia in 30 years. This has a lot to do with improved standards of living, but the women's rights movement is actually 100 years behind where it was 30 years ago all throughout the Muslim world. It also has to do with economic factors, since they just can't support those kids because no Muslim society has ever been self-sustaining or has ever even managed to not regress, even for short periods of time, and even in insanely wealthy coutries like Kuwait. They're actually having public service announcements in Egypt about birth control and they're considering legalizing abortion (now that they've lowered the age of marriage from 18 to 9). Which makes me think those corrupt leaders know a few things we don't, namely that McCain is going to get elected in November, which means they will be cut off from the billions in aid they've been living off of since the 1930's, and that Europe is slowly but surely shutting its gates. I also think that they're getting fewer student visas as free-world universities realize how poorly they perform once they get here despite receiving excellent marks in their home countries where college graduates think the earth is flat, and universities end up having to pay lawyers over endless harassment suits because of international Muslim students who harass women, Jews, and gays, when administrators don't properly discipline them for fear of their lives, plus many of them have terrorist connections and they don't pass through more thorough screening procedures: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1008699.html.

MASS said...

Jdamn13

you ve got a lot of bizzare remarks and flase info in your second comment.

Let me say in Egypt they can never leagalize abortion and they have never dropped the age marriage from 18 to 9 it was actually 16 a few years ago, so it increased.

the U.S 's aid policy is not dependant on the presidency such foreign policy is not a one man descssion. and aid was since 1973 (since camp david accords) not the 1930s..and only Egypt and Jordan recive something worth mentioning, of course Israel recives more and get the luxury of spending it in whatever manner they like.

what terrorist connetsions with International Students ? there hasnt been a single case of such claim that gained maedia coverage the least..and your link doesnt work

Anonymous said...

Mass, my link does work. Don't copy the period. And actually, the president has veto power and international aid packages must be approved each and every year, which means that the president does ultimately decide who doesn't get funding. If he says no, then no. Every time we send aid to a country it requires either a new bill or the renewal of an old bill, and it ultimately passes by the desk of the president, who can veto anything he wants. He can also cut off the UN so they won't have any more US dollars to fund Hamas, and McCain will do that.

We have been funding Egypt since the 1930s and we send aid to almost every Muslim country, even the insanely rich ones. And don't tell me we don't help Kuwait. We fought a war to save them from Saddam Hussein. Somalia gets billions from us, as does Kenya, Albania, Belarus, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and every single Muslim country with the exceptions of Saudi Arabia and Iran. We do this largely so that we can inspect their military bases, so those nations that don't let us in get sanctioned.