Last year, fewer than 10,000 children were born in Estonia — the lowest number of births since the country gained independence in 1918. Mark Gortfelder, a researcher at Tallinn University's Center for Demography, told Vikerraadio's "Uudis+" program that this decline was expected, as a similar trend was visible month by month in the previous year.

According to Gortfelder, the drop in births is driven by rising living costs and ongoing crises, trends seen across Europe, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, where the impact of war, sanctions and other issues has been strongest. "In these regions, the decline in births has been the most pronounced and Estonia is at the forefront of this trend," he said. However, the number of women of childbearing age in Estonia has not decreased significantly. In fact, due to the arrival of many Ukrainian women fleeing the war, this number has increased.

He emphasized that in today's society, having a child, or an additional child, is often viewed as a financial burden. "If we want to ensure continuity and sustainability in our society, we need to counteract this economic calculation. Right now, the rational choice is not to have children," Gortfelder said.

As one possible measure, he suggested that parental benefits and family support should be indexed in the same way as pensions. This would mitigate the negative impact of rising living costs on real incomes. "Of course, this is a political choice and it would be expensive, which is why it hasn't been implemented. But if such a mechanism had been introduced in 2022, I believe that over the past three years, we would have seen thousands more children born," he speculated.

However, Gortfelder admitted that it's impossible to know this with certainty. Still, he criticized the government's inaction, which, in his view, has not improved the situation. According to him, recent budget cuts have primarily affected large families. For instance, the new car tax did not include exemptions for minivans, a common choice for bigger families. "This shows that the issue is not on the government's agenda. The coalition agreements of the last two governments haven't addressed birth rates at all," he noted.

A longer-term trend is that women are giving birth at an increasingly older age, but Gortfelder said this doesn't explain the steep drop in births seen in recent years. "Some commentators have argued that this current crash isn't a serious problem and that it's just a sign of the times. The thinking goes that when life improves, birth rates will go up again. As a general principle, this logic works. If we compare it to the 1990s, the average age of first-time mothers has risen since then. But delaying childbirth in the hope of better times may no longer be a reliable strategy, as conceiving can become more difficult with age. That's why indexing parental benefits should be done immediately," Gortfelder explained.

In the short term, he said, the solution is relatively simple: give parents more financial support. However, in the long term, societal values must also be taken into account. "Having children no longer plays a central role in people's lives and it's harder to address this. We're also seeing a negative trend in relationships — partnerships break up more easily than before. That's something that's hard for the government to influence and is a more complex issue to tackle," he said.

Gortfelder warned that, while the number of ethnic Estonians has remained relatively stable over the last 30 years, this is set to change. "This is because large birth cohorts from previous decades are now reaching the end of their lives, while the younger generations coming of age are relatively small. I believe that, in ten years, the number of births will be even lower," he concluded.

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