In Estonia, the warning signs are already visible. Between 2022 and 2024, 7,500 fewer children were born than projected, saving €100 million on sectors like education in the short term – but risking a €1.3 billion tax revenue loss in the long run. With a rapidly ageing population, more spending will eventually be needed in long-term care and healthcare.

The Baltic states have tried to respond. Estonia has introduced parental benefits and digital services for young families. Latvia is expanding childcare access. Lithuania offers housing support and birth bonuses. Still, economic insecurity, rising housing costs, precarious labour conditions, and broader uncertainty about the future make it difficult for many to commit to having children.

Meanwhile, countries like Germany and Denmark have kept population numbers from dropping – not by turning low birth rates around, but by combining family policy with strategic immigration: the targeted recruitment and integration of skilled workers, students, or refugees to fill labour gaps and support the tax base.

The Baltics have made attempts to curb emigration, but without luck. Efforts to improve wages and social services have failed, fuelling a brain drain as many young, educated Baltic citizens find better opportunities abroad with no plans to return.

Otherwise, migration has long been a politically sensitive topic, due to legacies of Soviet-era population shifts, and concerns about cultural identity and language preservation. At the same time, comparatively low wages have made both policymakers and the public cautious about trying to attract newcomers.

Until now, no one has managed to push the low birthrates back up over the magic 2.1 children per woman – the so-called replacement rate. People cite financial uncertainty, the climate crisis, and shifting social norms as reasons for not having children.

According to Mare Ainsaar, associate professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia needs better job security, more affordable housing, and stable family benefits rather than policies that keep shifting.

However, there’s more to it. Pieter Vanhuysse, professor at the University of Southern Denmark and co-author of a study of parents in 12 European countries, has found that parents contribute 2.5 times more resources to society than non-parents. The deciding factor is the time and money parents invest in the next generation of citizens.

It takes a lot of effort to raise productive, mentally healthy, and economically and socially responsible humans, Vanhuysse says. The problem? Those efforts are neither visible in statistics, nor are they properly valued by societies, even the ones with strong welfare systems.

What the data clearly show is the ”motherhood penalty”: the financial setback women take for having children, including lower wages and pensions. It’s thought to be a big contributor to the gender pay gap, which remains a big issue in Europe.

Another suggestion is that policymakers overlook a key factor in times of uncertainty: the need for meaning. Without it, Christine Emba writes in The Atlantic, ”the perceived challenges of having children outweigh any subsidy the government might offer.”