The state forces you to choose between many and no children
The system of "targeted benefits" promised for next winter will bring to an end the specialization of families that has already begun - a minority in state-funded childcare and the majority in workaholism without any children, so that after paying taxes they will have enough money left for survival.
The increase in state support for families with the birth of each new child has indeed stabilized the birth rate. Of course, 17,420 births in 2021 are less than 17,552 births in 2020, but -123 births look like a very slight fluctuation in the same birth levels when compared to how these levels were falling year after year before. 2017 versus 2016 was characterized by -1,140 births and further 2018 versus 2017 was characterized by -1,514 births. In 2020, 1,234 fewer children were born than in 2019. So the direction of decline has remained, but the rate has fallen tenfold. Compared to -1,234, the current -123 looks almost like zero, which, in real terms, should be considered an outstanding achievement, insofar as the conviction that Latvia needs to increase its birth rate remains valid, despite the overpopulation of the world as a whole. In real terms, this means the decline in Latvia's population in general and, in particular, at the age at which nature allows people to produce offspring.
With 17,420 births, the Central Statistical Bureau is revising its figure of 17,115 births of February 18 this year. The increase is due to the births of Latvian nationals abroad, from where the information is delayed.
The number of new births in Latvia in 2021 supposedly belies alarmist forecasts that the 10,000 births mark will be crossed in the next few years. Purely arithmetically, if we apply -123 to the following years, (17,420-10,000)/123=60 - so in 60 years, a period that will be experienced by very few of Latvia's population who are currently adults. Politically, the message of stabilization of fertility in 2021 may serve the members of the current ruling coalition well in this autumn's 14th Saeima elections. The results of politicians and public policy, however, should be presented with the caveat that all politics in Latvia in recent years has been a mere fulfilment of Covid instructions sent from abroad. This included instructions sent about the lockdown, which was recognized by Neatkarīgā as a sex position already at the end of last year (pictured here).
However, the road from intercourse to childbirth is not a bed of roses. To truly walk it, money is the best material for paving it. The Latvian government alongside the Covid instructions received and distributed more Covid money than there has ever been. However, these funds were not unlimited and their distribution required choices as to whom to give the money to and whom not to give it to. In demographic policy, it was a choice to increase state support for families with children at a progressive rate. So, the more children in a family, the more support it received for each child.
The current demographic policy has not been plucked out of thin air, but has been designed in accordance with the expert-confirmed evidence that for every two adults one child is born, on average, as if by itself. An even lower birth rate cannot happen by itself. Then we would have to start repressing it by separating the sexes. Similarly, increasing the birth rate also requires intervention in the natural course of events. So we need to start supporting the birth of second and subsequent children. As a result, the proportion of first children has fallen significantly in Latvia and of subsequent children, it has increased, at the expense of which the fertility decline has now been halted. This is worth highlighting with a figure showing how the proportion of first births to mothers has fallen and the proportion of subsequent births has risen over a decade, expressed as a percentage of the total number of births in that year. The figure is simplified to three reference points at the beginning of the period in 2011, the end in 2021 and the middle in 2015, which stand out for the highest number of births in this time interval:
It is impressive how the first child fell by almost 10 percentage points, but more attention should be paid to the broken line in the profile of the second child. This is a warning that the second child cannot be born if the first has not been born beforehand, even though last year's births included 216x2 twins and 2x3 triplets. The peak of 8,450 second children in the time slice considered is due to 2016 as a consequence of the peak of first children having already been reached in 2014 with 9,609 children. The peak in the number of third and subsequent children was reached in 2017 and was further followed by a decline in their total number in contrast to an increase in their proportion.
The limits drawn by both nature and the design of our society are well understood and will not allow the continued replacement of the shortfall of first children by second, third, fourth, fifth and tenth children for parents who have already had their first, second, third, fourth and ninth children. The promise of demographers of first child births without state or societal incentives proved true last year, with the 6,659 first children still remaining as the largest group of newborns, but its lead over the second children declined from +1,462 in 2014 to +118 last year. The number of first children is losing its lead at such a rate that the second children pulling ahead would not seem surprising.
Society has expressed its submission to the rules dictated by the state, which require people to choose between turning to childcare as a basis for receiving at least a subsistence level of income from the state or living without children as an opportunity to increase their income independently of the state (including a career in public office, which should be considered in another dimension).
People should now know how the state will distribute aid next winter, where the means of subsistence may also be scarce for childless workers. Should they learn the skills of a professional unemployed person, i.e. a "targeted benefit" claimant, in time, or do everything today so that in 9 months' time there will be a family with a child for whom the state will provide assistance? Politicians give contradictory and incoherent answers to such questions, civil servants remain silent. The state is thus reserving for itself the right to say who will and who will not be helped in the middle or at the end of the next heating season rather than at the beginning. It is riskier to take the plunge and have a first child in such a situation than to have a third child to consolidate one's status as a recipient of state aid.