Since the late 1960s Finland finally switched to a narrowed model of population reproduction, characterized by a constantly decreasing total birth rate, which decreased to 1.45 in 2018. This model is characterized by a decrease in the absolute number and relative share of young age cohorts, especially under 19 years, a rapid increase in average age, which in 2018 was 41.6 years (an increase of 0.3 years compared to 2017), an increase in the number and proportion of people older than 64 years.
In 2016, Finland experienced a demographic transition when, for the first time in the country's history, peacetime mortality exceeded the birth rate, which is a long-term negative demographic trend while maintaining a modern demographic policy. In 2060, an excess of mortality over birth rates of up to 23 thousand per year is predicted (40 thousand births and 63 thousand deaths). Beginning in 2035, without mass incoming migration, the country's population will decrease at an increasing rate, and starting in 2060, the decline may amount to 100 thousand people for every four years.
The Finnish authorities in their demographic policy operate within the framework of the paradigm implemented by most EU countries, with its characteristic disregard for active pronatalistic measures, the introduction of socio-cultural models that contribute to reducing the birth rate and relying on the compensation of population loss due to immigrants. Since about 2005, the population growth in Finland has been achieved only due to incoming migration, which is facilitated by the liberalization of legislative norms, in particular, the facilitation of naturalization. Given the unique identity of Finnish society, which is threatened by the high rate of replacement of the indigenous population by foreign-ethnic and foreign-cultural immigrants, the difficulty of assimilating them, such a demographic strategy seems to be a dead end.
The impact of demographic policy on birth rate processes in Ukraine
