Tuesday's papers: Birth rate acceptance, Wolt consumer loans, and the price of food

Helsingin Sanomat is running a piece on the falling birth rate that has a radical new suggestion: acceptance. Finland's birth rate has dropped significantly since 2010, and currently stands at 1.26 children per woman.

That will cause problems for the pension system and other public services in future, because there will simply be too few taxpayers to fund them.

The reasons are many and varied, but women across the western world are now choosing to have fewer children and changing their minds will be tricky, according to researcher Tarmo Valkonen. One possible solution is that women would accept "worse partners", he says, but few politicians are advocating that.

Instead, increasing the population through pro-natal policies (usually paying families to have children through tax incentives or direct payments) or immigration are the usual solutions.

Valkonen, however, says that Finland should just accept that the working-age population is going to decline and either increase pension contributions or reduce pension payments.

Canada's pension system has automatic rule changes built-in, Valkonen notes, mandating changes when the population structure alters.

Finland is late to start on that path, but he sees few other options. In 2023 the government led by Petteri Orpo (NCP) rejected a suggestion from the Strategic Research Council that it would study the impact of immigration on the public finances.

It was the first time a government had rejected a theme by the council, which operates under the Academy of Finland to seek "concrete solutions to grand challenges that require multidisciplinary approaches".

Valkonen said to HS that perhaps previous research he had co-authored had reached too positive conclusions, and the right-wing government did not want further evidence accumulated on the benefits of immigration to the Finnish state finances.

Either way, his message is that birth rates are unlikely to increase and Finland needs to draw the appropriate conclusions.

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Wolting while poor

A letter from a social worker to Helsingin Sanomat last week suggested that Wolt's partnership with payment firm Klarna had led some people into debt problems.

The idea is that people with money troubles may take advantage of the "buy now, pay later" service to order food when they have few other options.

Iltalehti follows up on that by asking debt advisors what they think. Juha Pantzar from Takuusäätiö (the Guarantee Foundation), an association that helps people in debt to find a path out of it, says that it is a growing issue.

He notes that although Wolt orders are not the main reason people end up with debt problems, they are clearly evident in his clients' debt histories.

Klarna-style payments in general, however, are a growing factor in people's indebtedness. At present one third of the foundation's clients have debt problems composed entirely of this type of debt.

Young people are particularly vulnerable, according to Pantzar.

Food prices down

Those struggling to make ends meet will be concerned about recent jumps in the price of food, but Aamulehti says those prices are now stabilising.

The Tampere daily has an in-depth look at food prices, using the index kept by Statistics Finland. Food has gotten 2.7 percent cheaper since a peak in March 2023, but that still feels like a high price level for many.

Over the last couple of years food prices have risen by some 20 percent, and Sari Forsman-Hugg from Pellervo Economic Research (PTT) says there is no going back to that previous price level.

PTT says that the overall price increase next year will amount to around one percent. Coffee, cocoa and orange juice have seen big jumps in wholesale prices, which will affect consumer prices in Finland as well.

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