This week, The Financial Times featured an interview with Finnish demographer Anna Rotkirch, discussing one of the more striking subplots in the widening drama of demographic decline: the sudden collapse of what had heretofore been seen as a pro-natalist success story in the social democracies of northern Europe.

Until recently, countries like Finland, Sweden and Norway had notably higher fertility rates than many countries in southern Europe, and the Nordic socioeconomic model, with its mixture of gender egalitarianism and strong welfare-state supports for child-rearing, was often held up as proof that progressive policies could prop up birthrates, even that feminism is the new natalism.