Why Poland's Birthrate is Collapsing Poland's fertility will be...
More Births@MoreBirths
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Dec 24, 2024
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Why Poland's Birthrate is Collapsing
Poland's fertility will be just 1.1 births per woman in 2024, among the lowest in the world. This in a Catholic country with strict laws against abortion.
Why is fertility in 🇵🇱 so low and what can we learn?
🧵, please share.
Poland's fertility will be just 1.1 births per woman in 2024, among the lowest in the world. This in a Catholic country with strict laws against abortion.
Why is fertility in 🇵🇱 so low and what can we learn?
🧵, please share.
Birth Gauge@BirthGauge
Poland recorded just 126,500 births in the first half of 2024, a massive decline of 9.3% compared to 2023 (the largest decline in Europe in fact). This suggests a Polish TFR of 1.1 kids per woman this year.
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The first issue is work. Poland has become a work-obsessed culture where the average person works 50% more hours than in neighboring Germany, and longer than almost every other country in Europe. 2/10
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Poland has experienced what many regard as an economic miracle, with GDP per capita rising to near parity with the EU.
Yet since the end of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, the fertility in Poland has plunged, as economic goals have taken center stage and family has been sidelined. 3/10
Yet since the end of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, the fertility in Poland has plunged, as economic goals have taken center stage and family has been sidelined. 3/10
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Housing is another issue. Just like in the low fertility Mediterranean countries, a huge share of young Poles live with their parents throughout their 20s and beyond. 4/10
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Making matters worse, a lot of the new housing that is available to young people is small apartments in dense configurations, which is associated with particularly low fertility rates. 5/10
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Housing units are small and overcrowded, and rooms per person in Poland is among the lowest in Europe, further hurting family formation. 6/10
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Poland has been extraordinarily generous taking in refugees from the war in Ukraine, but this has exacerbated the housing shortage, making it even harder for young people to start families. 7/10
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What about the Catholic faith? It seems to have gotten a whole lot weaker over the past generation, especially among the young.
"In the early 1990s, almost 70% of young Poles regularly practiced religion; today, less than 25% do."
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"In the early 1990s, almost 70% of young Poles regularly practiced religion; today, less than 25% do."
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Meanwhile, there has been a big attitude shift as fewer women in 🇵🇱 say they plan to have children, possibly reflecting a backlash against abortion laws.
Fertility was 1.45 births per woman in 2020 when a strict new abortion law was passed but will be just 1.1 in 2024. 9/10
Fertility was 1.45 births per woman in 2020 when a strict new abortion law was passed but will be just 1.1 in 2024. 9/10
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Poland's fertility collapse is thus driven by several factors: an obsession with work and economic success that is competing with family formation, a housing shortage that is exacerbated by a refugee crisis and a loss of Poland's traditional Catholic faith among young people. On top of this, recent policy moves by the conservative government may have been too heavy-handed and led a negative attitude toward family formation among young women.
These are difficult issues but suggest the areas that Poland needs to work on if it is to turn things around. 10/10
(Follow @MoreBirths for more on how we solve our greatest crisis.)
These are difficult issues but suggest the areas that Poland needs to work on if it is to turn things around. 10/10
(Follow @MoreBirths for more on how we solve our greatest crisis.)
