Csaba G. Tóth
@tothgcsaba
Demographer and economist. population dynamics | mortality | population ageing | fertility | public policy
Childlessness among Nordic men has generally increased over recent decades. Finland saw the sharpest rise, from 19% in 1990 to almost 30% in 2024, while Norway reached 27%. Nearly one in three Finnish men is now childless at age 45. #demography #fertlity norden.diva-portal.org/smash/get/di...
Hungary’s population is ageing, yet the number of deaths fell to a historic low in 2025. This may reflect the pandemic’s mortality displacement (harvesting) effect and/or rising life expectancy. #demography #Hungary
The freefall in Hungary’s fertility rate may have ended, or at least paused at a very low level. Still, the number of births has fallen by one quarter over the past five years. #demography #fertility #Hungary
TFR can fluctuate with birth timing, but completed cohort fertility shows a clearer trend: over recent decades, the number of children women have by age 45 has declined in most countries, except the United States and Sweden. Excellent paper: www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=... #demography #fertility #US
Fertility is in freefall. More than 2 billion people now live in countries with a TFR below 1.3—a level that implies rapid population decline without substantial immigration. The fall is deeper, broader and likely more persistent than previously expected. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Hong Kong's mean ideal family size fell from 1.8 to 1.47 over 25 years. The two-child ideal was replaced first by one-child ideals, then zero-child ideals. #demography #fertility www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Hungary experienced the second-largest population decline in the EU in 2024. Strikingly, all five countries with the sharpest population losses were in Central and Eastern Europe, highlighting the region’s deepening demographic challenges. More on this: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Fertility policy can work — at least in the short term. Hungary’s 2019 pronatalist package appears to have accelerated the decline in birth intervals, reinforcing a trend that had already begun with the post-crisis economic recovery. #demography #fertility #birth #Hungary
The leading cause of death among young men isn't cancer or infectious disease—it's injury. Road traffic crashes, violence, and self-harm account for the largest share of deaths among males aged 15–24 across every income group. #demography desapublications.un.org/publications...
The total fertility rate dropped to 1.31 in the 12 months ending in May 2026 in Hungary, while the number of live births fell by 4.4% compared with the previous year. #demography #fertility #Hungary
Most EU countries are expected to shrink by 2050, with the steepest declines in the East and South. Continued population growth is projected in only a handful of countries, including Luxembourg, Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands and France. #demography #Poland #France op.europa.eu/en/publicati...
Hungary’s fertility trend broadly follows European patterns, but its mortality remains much higher than that of its peers. This deserves more attention: beyond the individual gains of longer, healthier lives, improvements in mortality could also significantly moderate population loss. #demography
Childlessness is no longer marginal. Among women born around 1980, roughly 1 in 4 are childless by their mid-40s in Spain, Greece and Switzerland. At the other end, the share is around 10% or lower in Romania, Portugal, Iceland and Bulgaria. #demography #Fertility #Hungary #Poland #Spain
Hungarian women born in 1979 had fewer than 1.6 children by age 45. Among cohorts born roughly 15 years earlier, the figure was still around 2. #demoraphy #fertility #Hungary
In some regions of Hungary, induced abortions in 2024 reached almost 50% of the number of live births -roughly one abortion for every two babies born. #demography #fertility #Hungary
Demography matters. It was a pleasure to discuss the key demographic trends shaping Hungary and Central and Eastern Europe with Csaba László on Jazzy Radio. (In Hungarian.) #demography #population #Hungary jazzy.hu/adasok/magya...
Abortions in Hungary fell by one-fifth in Jan–Apr 2026. Abortions per 100 live births also dropped markedly, meaning a smaller share of pregnancies ended in induced abortion. But this coincided with a sharp decline in fertility and births, pointing to fewer pregnancies overall—not more babies.
Emigration from Hungary reached a new record in 2024 and remained close to 40,000 in 2025. The number of Hungarians leaving the country in the last two years was more than double the pre-pandemic level, amounting to almost 0.5% of the total population each year. #demography #Hungary #migration
Hungary could lose nearly 4 million people by the end of the century if today’s extremely low fertility rate (1.3) persists. The population would shrink from 9.5 million to just 5.8 million by 2100. #demography #Hungary #fertility ourworldindata.org/population-s...
In 2024, 58% of children born in Vienna had a mother born abroad. For Austria as a whole, the figure was 36%. About half of foreign-born mothers came from the EU, especially from Germany and Romania. The rest came from non-EU countries (Syria, Bosnia, Turkey). #demography www.birthbarometer.at/en/
Foreign-born women still have higher fertility than native-born women in Austria, but the difference is narrowing. In 2024, their higher fertility of foreign-born women pushed Austria’s overall Total Fertility Rate up by about 0.1. #demography #Austria www.birthbarometer.at/en/download/...
The number of children that mothers give birth to is stable or even rising. But the proportion of women who have any children at all has fallen steeply in the past 15 years. #demograpy #fertility Excellent article: www.ft.com/content/fba3...
Higher temperatures increased mortality during the warmest months, but milder cold seasons reduced mortality even more, resulting in over 900,000 fewer deaths in Europe during 2015–2024 than under the climate conditions of 1950–1979. #demography #mortality doi.org/10.1016/j.eh...
Across Europe, there’s loud talk about boosting fertility. But first, the decline needs to be stopped. #demography #fertility #Hungary #Poland #EU #Germany
While men used to have higher fertility than women globally, this has reversed, and women have and will have a higher fertility rate than men. Excellent research: www.demogr.mpg.de/en/news_even...
Every now and then, it is worth revisiting past projections. Five years on, the gap between our projection and the observed population in Hungary is just 0.4% in 2026. This is a strong signal that the long-term outlook of about 8.5 million by 2050 is on track. demografia.hu/kiadvanyokon...
Foreign-born residents now make up 14% of the EU27 population, up from 10% a decade ago. Luxembourg is in a league of its own (52%), followed by Malta (32%), Cyprus (28%), and Ireland (23%). The lowest shares are found in post-communist countries: Poland (3%), Bulgaria (4%), and Slovakia (4%).
The female surplus in Hungary has declined from 501K to 321K since 2010, falling from 5.0% to 3.4% of the total population. A narrowing life expectancy gap and selective migration likely play a role. #demography #population #Hungary #migration