Also is it even possible to do so nowadays?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics\_of\_Estonia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Estonia)

31 comments

  2. Well, if you really want it to rise, establish a really high income tax for people with no children and a somewhat high tax for people with 1 child. Instant results! It’s another question if it’s worth it 🙂

  4. Lyman Stone is an economist specializing in fertility rates and a very simplified summary of his research results is – significant lump sum payments per child are what works.

    No “programs” or “incentives” or “comprehensive measures”. These don’t work, waste money and distort the economy. What works is paying lump sums for children.

    https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/

  5. You need to identify demographics who are interested in having (more) children, but stopped by some external factor. And then work with the external factor. I think the largest issue parents have pointed out is lack of daycare options. Especially for children that need some kind of specialist help. If parents have to pay out of pocket for private sector speech specialist and take their kindergarten age child there the recommended 3 times a week, you have hard time imagining having to do it for two other children too. So they stop at one or two.

  8. Attract more people maybe younger) to the country..? Most likely they will want to have kids.

    I think the current incentives are quite great but most standards. Going above and beyond wont help much if ppl arent interested.

  9. Vote for Isamaa party. Their policies favour heavily on having 3+ children. But in reality we don’t want to create situation where people have children for cash.

    It’s a big problem in any developed nation and could create demographic collapse as Musk has said.

  10. Financial safety and comfort for all – not just those with kids.

    Miscarriages, for example, are a terribly traumatizing affair in the financial sense, not even talking about the mental part.

    Also, allow regular people who want to adopt, to adopt – the rules are very draconian right now and this contributes to the general “children are a curse”/”dear me, I hope I don’t raise them wrong” sentiment as younger people are walled off from adoption options.

  11. People these days are materialist, so the incentives have to be materialist, too. Reducing a woman’s income tax rate by 5% for each child born in wedlock sounds good to me, because it hits several targets at once. It incentivises women to marry and have kids in their youngest, fertile years and postpone their careers for later instead of the other way around, and they also gain a tax advantage to make up for the time spent on family instead of careers. It gives the same or higher incentive for higher earners, whereas a lump sum would not and instead motivate the lowest-earners, some of whom might only see kids as sources of income.

  12. According to a friend of mine, in Estonia, where maternal leave is provided for up to 2 years, some companies are hesitant to hire women because they may need to take extended periods of time off for maternity leave. This creates an indirect effect where some women may be discouraged from having children because they fear it will harm their career prospects.

    TBF, I wouldn’t reproduce either, no matter how much the government pays me (even though I’m not estonian) if it hurts my career chances in the long term.

  14. You have to ask how long does it take to get skills/an education to land a job that allows to live comfortably and support a family at the same time plus leaves some free time too.

  15. When asked how many kids do people want (on average, people have 1-2) then the real answer has been quite often that people would like to have 3 or more. But they don’t. Reasons include

    * expensive and small real estate. With 2 kids, you can fit (comfortably or less so) in a 3 room apartment so that everybody is not squished together, with 3 kids you kind of need 4 rooms or more. Estonian apartments tend to be smaller size-wise even if they have 3-4 rooms (I’ve seen 4 room apartments that have 65-70 sqm and the same sqm size is normal for 2 room apartments in some southern European countries). They’re also expensive and nobody wants to live like our parents and grandparents did, which was grandparents in one room, parents in living room and kids in tiny room as well.

    * lack of and restricted access to specialised child care and service options. Stuff like care for kids with disabilities, where parents have to have endless amounts of willpower and energy and excessive amounts of knowledge about the laws and what their kids are entitled to in order to be given the support they need. Sometimes the local municipal social care department doesn’t even know what these kids are entitled to; sometimes they just don’t fulfill the law even if they have to.

    * kindergarten facilities. In some areas, lack of space is a huge problem, like in Tallinn. Parents want their kids to be able to go to a kindergarten nearby, but might be offered a placement in Lasnamägi even if they live in Kopli or Mustamägi.

    * financial insecurity. Lots of people earn good salaries, but even more do not. Financial insecurity means they cannot buy themselves an apartment (point 1), lack of money means they cannot ensure their kids would have good enough of a life (in case of disability, point 2, otherwise for extracurricular activities which are all quite costly).

    I’d say that if childcare options and access to specialised services were to improve properly AND real estate prices/availability weren’t so weird, people might have more children.

    Or they may not. Plenty of people might just not want kids at all.

  17. In general, we should ban women from universities and lower salaries, this is the unfortunate truth that correlates to birth rates.
    We can’t save ourselves from demographic catastrophe any more. Even if our government would make a “national procurement” for 100 000 Estonian babies using for example surrogate mothers from Ukraine (and Estonian sperm + eggs), then it still wouldn’t help us in the long run. A lot of older societies have tried all sorts of incentives – none of them has worked. When society grows wealthier and more educated then birthrates drop.

  18. More availability of affordable housing for families with kids.

    Some real estate developers make entire apartment buildings full of apartments with just 1 or 2 bedrooms which is not suitable for families. 3 or more bedrooms are often in low supply and/or insanely expensive.

  21. There is one question that always pops up in my head when someone mentions Estonian demographics: “Why the hell would you want to increase its population?”

    I’m very much enjoying its low population density, quiet neighborhoods, almost no queues in public places, decent ecological situation and many other benefits. No way am I willing for this to change.

  22. I think that the harsh reality is that there is no feasible solution to this. People are too poor or if they have enough money they want to do career, enjoy their money etc. There has to be some shift in the society but, unless we go 100 years back in time, then im not seeing this happen

  23. Evolution makes life solve itself. In the long run the genetic and social mutations favouring children will inevitably increase the proportion of population with those mutations.

    On the social side, there exist modern subcultures with positive fertility rates, some of those subcultures will probably become mainstream. The genetic effect will take much longer to build up and only becomes relevant if the social mutations do not lead to effective reproduction.

  24. First is monetary. Creating family is sometimes delayed until home can be purchased, what take increasingly longer.
    Lack of childcare. By law childcare should be offered to every children over 1. 5 years. But municipalities haven’t bothered to build kindergartens in the right places. (looking at you tallinn). Private daycare also have waiting list. Furthermore they are more expensive because the price difference is only partially subsidized(it varies).
    After 1.5years the paid maternity leave end. Meaning that you are left with 1 income until you find childcare.
    Those are making people postpone having children what in turn makes people having children have less.

  25. Money please!

    I am kidding, I think our social and monetary benefits for new parents are great. But I need more money to afford having a kid. I need to hae money saved up and to be making a good amount of money before I decide to have a kid.

  27. Changes in culture. I used to believe that it was due to economic issues, but looking at history and statistics, the argument makes no sense. Our Birthrates were recovering from the early 90s economic fall until 2010, when they reserved. Despite life being better now than during 2010, people are having far less kids. If the economic argument had weight, then we should had seen the birthrates continue to rise in the 2010s, which didn’t happen. Throwing government money doesn’t work, as shown with a number of countries that tried and failed. I get the economy here isn’t the right now but people back in Medieval Estonia, we were literal serfs dealing with war, disease, poverty, etc, and yet they still managed to have plenty of kids. Also as someone studying politics, the experts I speak to also agree with this (They aren’t from the Estonian right). The same applies for other countries. Unless we change our mindsets and have kids en mass, our problems will get worse, with fewer people we can call up for war against Russia, more burden from the number of elderly compared to youth, smaller ability for the economy to grow, and an culture and language more under threat from foreign influences.

    To put it shortly; we need to change our mindsets and have lots of kids or we are screwed.

    (Note: I decided to write this in English because from what I could tell from your profile your neither an Estonian or person living in Estonia.)

  29. Look at israel, a well developed nation, that has a high birthrate. They have an actual pyramid. The only major difference ive been able to determine, is that they have a cultural difference. Having children is a priority for the people there, due to the cultural influence. In estonia, the culture is, have a few kids later in life, if any. There is no priority put to having children.

  30. Problem is our society. Mothers are second-class citizens.
    You can’t do this or that without others judging you. You can’t go to most places without people looking at you and your kid with angry eyes. Grandmothers and grandfathers are boomers who rarely want to be part of their grandkids’ lives because they are too busy with their own lives. There is a problem with daycares and then when your kid is sick almost every other day your boss will look at you like you do it on purpose.
    Society accepts fathers to go on “boys trips” but rarely there are couples where the mother Can take some time off. My friends have described how often public transport driver is willing to even drive away when the mother is not able to lift the baby carrier onto the bus, meanwhile, when the father is going to the park with his child, people are often approaching and saying how good father he is 😀
    Unfortunately, I don’t know how to fix our society. I always say to my friends that they shouldn’t lock themselves in their apartments because this way people forget that children and mothers are part of society.
    This is my opinion.

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