Latvian Fertility

Well, while we are looking at the economic straights which Latvia is now in, it may also be useful to see how we got to where we are. Basically the Latvian economy is growing very rapidly, in all probability too rapidly even in the best of cases. But Latvia does not have the best of cases. If there were a plentiful and adequate supply of fresh labour, growth rates near the present one might not be unthinkable (remember China's GDP is currently growing at around the 11% annual rate, and India may well soon overtake this - over say a 5 to 10 year window). So why not Latvia? Well you have to look at the fertility and migration situation, that is why not.

Latvian Abroad had a post over the weekend which gave some details of the numbers of Latvians in the UK and Ireland (which must surely be the principal destinations since 2005), while Latvijas Statistika offered us some useful information on Latvian fertility earlier in the week.

But before we get into some of the more recent details, I've compared a simple chart showing live births in Latvia since the late 1980s (and in the process, documented the natural population decline by making a comparison with deaths, as can be seen the crossover point is around 1992).



And before going any further I think it important to point out that, from an economic point of view, it is live births and not the Total Fertility Rate statistic which matters, since these births are what regulate the actual flow of new people into the working age groups. As can be see there was a very dramatic decline after 1987 (ie 20 years ago). The decline steadied after 1999, and the number of births has risen slightly, but it is important to point out here (and even forgetting for the moment about the impact of migration) that the number of births will surely soon start to fall again.

This is principally for two reasons:

In the first place there is the fact that the median age of first birth for Latvian mothers at around 25.5 is still comparatively low by West European standards (in Western Europe the numbers normally are approaching the 30 mark). Let's have a look at a chart from Latvijas Statistika:



So we can see that mean ages at first birth have been steadily rising. This process is known as birth postponement, and produces what is known as a "birth dearth" as women delay having children. This process also produces artificially low readings on period based fertility indicators (like the standard Total Fertility Rate), but this, as I say, is largely irrelevant from an economic point of view, since what we are interested in is how many people will be arriving in the labour market in the years ahead. And as I say, since postponement has only run approximately half its probable course, we should expect more from the "birth dearth effect".

But there is a second reason why births are likely to go down with time rather than up, and this is known as the population momentum effect. If we look at the number of children born in 1999 (just under 20,000), then even assuming that Latvia achieved that magical 2.1 perfect reproduction fertility number, they would only produce 20,000 children, not the old level of 40,000 or so. And we can be pretty sure that these 20,000 children born in 1999 won't do this even under the best of circumstances (which, of course, we aren't) since even being optimistic they are only likely to have completed cohort fertility of somewhere in the 1.5 - 1.7 region if other countries examples are anything to go by. So these 20,000 children will produce say 16,000 or 17,000 children.

And there is worse to come, since these children will start to reproduce, on average, in 2030, and not 2025. So the smaller number of births will be spaced out over even longer periods of time, etc , etc.

Well of course, all of this is so far into the future that it is not exactly the burning topic of the present crisis. On the other hand do not forget about it altogether, since that is what people did back in 1990, and look where we are now. If countries like Latvia are ever to be put on a stable footing this fertility issue needs to be addressed, and seriously, and pronto.

In the meantime the only alternative is inward migration, and if the Latvian government is serious about trying to avoid a hard landing then it had better get serious about migration, and how to facilitate it.

Incidentally, in the light of everything said above, this extract from Latvijas Statistikas is the next best thing to "gobbledygook":

As girls born in the eighties of the 20th century have reached the fertile age, the number of women at this age does not reduce further more. At the beginning of the 2007, as well as in 2000, in Latvia there were 590 thousand women aged 15-49 or 48% of the total number of the women (in comparison: in 1997 - 45%). Women aged 20-29 has the highest birth rates. The share of women in this group in the total number of the women at fertile age has increased from 27.2% in 2000 to 28.7% at the beginning of the 2007. The increase of the number of young woman, as well as the growth of the number of the marriages, promise the increase of the births also in the future.

They don't really seem to understand how this process works, and promising an increase in births in the future on this basis is to offer one more time false hopes and more reasons for inaction. Latvia deserves better.


And also just for the record, here's the fertility chart based on TFRs:



As you will notice, the fertility rate registered has started to rise again slightly. Now take a look at the earlier chart on mean first birth ages, and note how the rate of increase slows in the second half of the period covered over the rate of increase in the first part, and here's your "improvement in fertility" (in large part). There really is no big mystery about this.

But completed cohort fertility in Latvia never was as low as 1.13, this number is just a statistical artifact. We simply do not know what the completed fertility rate for the women born in the years 1980-1985 will be, but as I say above, looking at societies in Western and Southern Europe (Germany, Italy etc) without a systematic child support system in place, I would say 1.5 to 1.7 TFR would be a fair (and reasonably optimistic) guess.

Also the map in below presents the mean ages of mothers at first birth in Europe around 2003, and shows the extent of postponement in the timing of parenthood. To put these data in perspective -- in 1975 the highest mean age at first birth registered in Europe was 25.7 (in Switzerland), and in the majority of countries the indicator was between 22 and 24 years. Most researchers interpret this as part of the general trend towards postponement of choices that are irreversible or hardly reversible, usually associated with the ideational and other changes linked to the so-called “second demographic transition”. Again in line with the predictions of the second demographic transition theory about the importance of individual autonomy and self-expression, the differences between individuals within a population in the timing of parenthood are also increasing. And also as you will note, the differences between Western and Eastern Europe in terms of birth timing is still striking.


(Please click over image for better viewing)