[marginalia_nu]

Immigration policy is rather a consequence of a demographic pyramid[1] that isn't really looking much like a pyramid anymore. Socialized health care and pensions is really dependent on able-bodied working-age people outnumbering the old and infirm by a pretty large margin.

Lax immigration policies were thought a solution to that, though I think almost anyone would agree (non the least the immigrants themselves) that the implementation of this solution was bungled fairly spectacularly.

Regardless of the merits of immigration as a solution, the nordics are very much, along many other western countries, kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place with regards to the demographic distribution.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Sweden_p... (it's actually looking a bit better now. For a while it had a very sort of unfortunate buttplug shape)

[toxik]

Meanwhile, having children is more difficult than ever. Preschools are asking parents for their attested work schedules, just so they don't sneak an hour of leeway between work and picking up kids... What a bait and switch that was, fool everyone that society will provide, nobody has to stay at home, then inch by inch, little by little, take those things away. Let the rich have their tax breaks though, lest they leave for another social democratic paradise.

Sorry, it's tough seeing this play out in real time.

[marginalia_nu]

It think anyone with any experience of it will agree that Swedish bureaucracy and policy making is, generously put, as misguided as it is bumbling, but whatever the cause of the declining birth rates is, any explanatory model also needs to account for why it is also happening in South Korea and Japan, along with the nordics and a bunch of other places.

I doubt young adults in in Seoul are skipping kids because of Swedish preschool policies.