I am also hoping for some alternative explanation and for birth rates to return to normal. What you are saying is interesting.
Keep in mind that a X change in marriages a year prior, would only cause perhaps x/5 change in overall birth rate, not being exact.
The interesting thing about Hungary is that it provides county-by-county data for vaccinations on Jul 13 2021, and birth rate drops in Q1 2022. I ran a regression and found that P = 0.037 and the negative slope is statistically significant. It is in my Hungary article.
Hi Igor, thank you very much for taking the time to read my post. And for offering your feedback.
For me, Hungary is a real outlier when you look at the chart of marriages from Eurostat.
I don't know if you read my reply to CM27874 on this, but in 2019 Hungary started a state campaign with a financial incentive scheme to boost marriages (with a view to boosting births!). That's why marriages shot up in 2019 by 28% - in contrast to just about every other European country whose figures stayed on trend or within normal bounds.
That Hungary's marriage figures didn't suffer the same Wedding Crasher effect in the first year of the pandemic is most likely because of this financial incentive and perhaps a less restrictive pandemic response (am not sure about the latter).
I suspect there were a lot of marriages of convenience and other unplanned marriages that took place in 2020 which cancelled out the Wedding Crasher effect of the pandemic. The state was offering couples subsidised loans (the conditions varied on whether the couple built/bought a house/apartment and how many children the would have. But I am sure there was a substantial group who married on paper to simply take advantage of the financial benefit. The 2019 one-year rise in marriages is simply enourmous.
What I am trying to say, is that Hungary’s marriages figures are not a true representation of intent to start a family and more likely an artefact of this financial scheme. The figures are likely hiding a similar crash in couples STARTING families as in other countries. My working hypothesis is that while overall births often remained largely unaffected in the second pandemic year there was a concealed sharp fall in couples starting families.
Try running a regression on the pandemic crash in marriages for many of the countries you are looking at, I think you will be surprised.
I enjoyed reading your article, I am quite familiar with fake marriages in general (not from my personal experience) etc, but fake marriages do not give births right?
Overall marriages and births are somewhat related, but correlation is not super huge for year to year changes. This gets into arcana of demographics where I know I am not at my strongest.
Igor, yes, abortions dropped by a lot but it does not seem to correlate with the vaccine rollout.
Abortions data is available from the same German Federal Statistics Agency that provides the births data. https://www-genesis.destatis.de/ (the interface is also offered in English)
There you will find abortions data PER QUARTER. Abortions rates are apparently also highly seasonal.
Q1 2021 abortions were already down 7 % on the previous year!
This does NOT correlate with the prioritised vaccine rollout. I can tell you from personal knowledge in my part of Germany that it would have been virtually impossible to get vaccinated in Q1 2021 if you were not older, vulnerable, or in frontline healthcare.
Here are the recent year-on-year details on abortions in Germany:
Q1 2021 down 7%
Q2 2021 down 8.5%
Q3 2021 down 6.4%
Q4 2021 up 0.8%
Q1 2022 up 4.8% (but still down 2.6% on pre-pandemic/pre-vaccine)
Overall 2020 was down 0.9%
Overall 2021 was down 5.4%
Here you can read press releases in English on the abortion figures:
Nice analysis! Good point about some people having "extra" children during the lockdowns. However, quite a few relationships did not survive the ordeal of being locked in one house for so long. New relationship must be formed before people decide to have children. In conclusion, the vaccin theory is too simplistic in my view. I know Igor won't like it 😀
Whatever the proximate cause, be it wax-induced infertility, reduced marriage rate, or my favourite "not tonight darling" hypothesis, there is a more distal cause. Government policies and scaremongering.
The detailed mechanism is less important than getting the message out - these bastards did this to you, to all of you, and you went along.
The choice is between a close shave with tyranny, that may have been helpful in making people realise how easy it is to slip in to, and actual tyranny. I am not optimistic that we will now choose the right path.
One thing that struck me last winter was how compliant the upcoming gerneration - teenagers and young adults - have become. Some of the best days of their youth were blighted by ridiculous panic, fear and authoritarianism.
I've taken another look at the Hungarian marriages data. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there is something strange about the huge jump from 2018 to 2019.
..
Looks like they introduced a scheme in 2019 to pay people to get married in the form of subsidized loans.
"A big new scheme this year offers couples that marry before the bride’s 41st birthday subsidized loans of up to 10 million forints ($33,000). A third of the loan will be forgiven if they go on to have two children, and the entire debt wiped out if they have three."
I think some couples were marrying just to get some money and not necessarily to start a family.
So for me Hungary's marriage figures 2019-2020 are an artefact of this incentive scheme. But I guess there was nothing stopping those couples who did want familes from marrying during the pandemic, so..
Maybe people in Hungary are overall quite happy with their government, contrary to what we are being told around here. Here's some comments (just found by googleing):
I am also hoping for some alternative explanation and for birth rates to return to normal. What you are saying is interesting.
Keep in mind that a X change in marriages a year prior, would only cause perhaps x/5 change in overall birth rate, not being exact.
The interesting thing about Hungary is that it provides county-by-county data for vaccinations on Jul 13 2021, and birth rate drops in Q1 2022. I ran a regression and found that P = 0.037 and the negative slope is statistically significant. It is in my Hungary article.
Hi Igor, thank you very much for taking the time to read my post. And for offering your feedback.
For me, Hungary is a real outlier when you look at the chart of marriages from Eurostat.
I don't know if you read my reply to CM27874 on this, but in 2019 Hungary started a state campaign with a financial incentive scheme to boost marriages (with a view to boosting births!). That's why marriages shot up in 2019 by 28% - in contrast to just about every other European country whose figures stayed on trend or within normal bounds.
That Hungary's marriage figures didn't suffer the same Wedding Crasher effect in the first year of the pandemic is most likely because of this financial incentive and perhaps a less restrictive pandemic response (am not sure about the latter).
I suspect there were a lot of marriages of convenience and other unplanned marriages that took place in 2020 which cancelled out the Wedding Crasher effect of the pandemic. The state was offering couples subsidised loans (the conditions varied on whether the couple built/bought a house/apartment and how many children the would have. But I am sure there was a substantial group who married on paper to simply take advantage of the financial benefit. The 2019 one-year rise in marriages is simply enourmous.
What I am trying to say, is that Hungary’s marriages figures are not a true representation of intent to start a family and more likely an artefact of this financial scheme. The figures are likely hiding a similar crash in couples STARTING families as in other countries. My working hypothesis is that while overall births often remained largely unaffected in the second pandemic year there was a concealed sharp fall in couples starting families.
Try running a regression on the pandemic crash in marriages for many of the countries you are looking at, I think you will be surprised.
I enjoyed reading your article, I am quite familiar with fake marriages in general (not from my personal experience) etc, but fake marriages do not give births right?
Overall marriages and births are somewhat related, but correlation is not super huge for year to year changes. This gets into arcana of demographics where I know I am not at my strongest.
Hallo Igor,
I received a breakdown of the 2022 births for Germany by birth order.
There is NO significant shift in ratio of first births to others.
I think this disproves my theory the "missing weddings" during the pandemic could be responsible for the current "missing births" :(
I admire you for your dogged Pursuit Of Truth and appreciate the information. The abortions in Germany dropped a lot in 2021
Hi Igor,
Here is my new post exploring very early miscarriages as a possible explanation for the missing German births:
https://lostintranslations.substack.com/p/menstrual-changes-and-very-early
Igor, yes, abortions dropped by a lot but it does not seem to correlate with the vaccine rollout.
Abortions data is available from the same German Federal Statistics Agency that provides the births data. https://www-genesis.destatis.de/ (the interface is also offered in English)
There you will find abortions data PER QUARTER. Abortions rates are apparently also highly seasonal.
Q1 2021 abortions were already down 7 % on the previous year!
This does NOT correlate with the prioritised vaccine rollout. I can tell you from personal knowledge in my part of Germany that it would have been virtually impossible to get vaccinated in Q1 2021 if you were not older, vulnerable, or in frontline healthcare.
Here are the recent year-on-year details on abortions in Germany:
Q1 2021 down 7%
Q2 2021 down 8.5%
Q3 2021 down 6.4%
Q4 2021 up 0.8%
Q1 2022 up 4.8% (but still down 2.6% on pre-pandemic/pre-vaccine)
Overall 2020 was down 0.9%
Overall 2021 was down 5.4%
Here you can read press releases in English on the abortion figures:
https://www.destatis.de/SiteGlobals/Forms/Suche/EN/Servicesuche_Formular.html?nn=23752&resourceId=2376&input_=23752&pageLocale=en&templateQueryString=abortion&submit.x=0&submit.y=0
Here you can find the different datasets to the abortion figures:
https://www-genesis.destatis.de/genesis/online?operation=find&suchanweisung_language=en&query=terminations+of+pregnancy#abreadcrumb
Nice analysis! Good point about some people having "extra" children during the lockdowns. However, quite a few relationships did not survive the ordeal of being locked in one house for so long. New relationship must be formed before people decide to have children. In conclusion, the vaccin theory is too simplistic in my view. I know Igor won't like it 😀
Whatever the proximate cause, be it wax-induced infertility, reduced marriage rate, or my favourite "not tonight darling" hypothesis, there is a more distal cause. Government policies and scaremongering.
The detailed mechanism is less important than getting the message out - these bastards did this to you, to all of you, and you went along.
The choice is between a close shave with tyranny, that may have been helpful in making people realise how easy it is to slip in to, and actual tyranny. I am not optimistic that we will now choose the right path.
One thing that struck me last winter was how compliant the upcoming gerneration - teenagers and young adults - have become. Some of the best days of their youth were blighted by ridiculous panic, fear and authoritarianism.
But they hardly said "peep".
Births seem to be down in Hungary as well:
https://www.ksh.hu/stadat_files/nep/en/nep0067.html
I've taken another look at the Hungarian marriages data. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there is something strange about the huge jump from 2018 to 2019.
..
Looks like they introduced a scheme in 2019 to pay people to get married in the form of subsidized loans.
"A big new scheme this year offers couples that marry before the bride’s 41st birthday subsidized loans of up to 10 million forints ($33,000). A third of the loan will be forgiven if they go on to have two children, and the entire debt wiped out if they have three."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-marriages-idUSKBN1Y01XG
I think some couples were marrying just to get some money and not necessarily to start a family.
So for me Hungary's marriage figures 2019-2020 are an artefact of this incentive scheme. But I guess there was nothing stopping those couples who did want familes from marrying during the pandemic, so..
Hmmm..
Yes, incentive schemes it is. Would this also have worked in Germany?
Great find! Nice interface with Q1 2022 data included.
Why do you think Hungary is the only country in Europe with increased marriages during the pandemic? And why did their marriages shoot up in 2019??
Maybe people in Hungary are overall quite happy with their government, contrary to what we are being told around here. Here's some comments (just found by googleing):
https://china-cee.eu/2022/03/07/hungary-social-briefing-marriages-in-hungary/