Science under siege

 

We need continued innovation to stay on top of global challenges.

The horizon looks bright thanks to science and technology (photo by author in Montenegro).

The Happiest Country Rejects Divisiveness

 

People in Finland are getting tired of cuts to the welfare state and the anti-immigrant rhetoric in recent years.

On Sunday, April 14^th, Finland had regional and local elections where subnational units, cities and communes elected their representatives. The results were a radical turnaround from the previous national elections in 2023, that ushered in the current right-wing coalition government. This time, the opposition Social Democratic Party gained the most and became the largest party, while the coalition government partners generally lost their shares. Most significantly, the anti-immigration Finns Party suffered a crushing blow.

I arrived in Helsinki soon after and was able to gauge the sentiments of some of the denizens of the capital city where I was born and spent the first 25 years of my life. The admittedly completely unscientific sample consisting of people in my circle nevertheless provided some insights into why this change happened. Mind you, the people I talked with represent a range of very different political views, although they all are from Helsinki and all have been academically educated.

Since the fall of the government of the Social Democratic prime minister Sanna Marin (famous for her social media presence, featuring dancing and partying), Finland has been governed by a right-wing coalition led by Petteri Orpo of the largest conservative party in the country, the National Coalition Party (NCP). In the parliamentary system of Finland where there currently are nine national parties represented in the parliament, no single party will ever come even close to garnering an absolute majority of votes. Consequently, all governments are coalition governments pulled together by the biggest winner of any election. The current government brings together members from the NCP, the Swedish People´s Party (SFP/RKP), the Christian Democrats, and the populist Finns Party. SFP and the Christians are minor players, respectively with 4.3% and 4.2% of the votes in the 2023 elections, but Orpo brought them along to pull together enough for a ruling majority.

The Finns Party with their 20.1% share of the votes in the 2023 election rose to the second place just behind NCP. With this, they laid claim to a large number of seats in the government, including that of the Minister of Finance: Riikka Purra’s rather extreme views regarding immigrants have shocked many citizens, while gaining approval from her supporters.

The government embarked on an unabashed assault on the welfare state that has long been the foundation of the Finnish society, as in its Nordic neighbors. The government policies have focused on cutting public services, including support to health care, students and the unemployed. International development assistance faces reductions of one-quarter of the funding. The government program also includes tax cuts for firms and the wealthy, while the value added tax was increased resulting in higher costs for everyone, including those with the fewest means.

Finland has been ranked the world’s happiest country for eight years in a row. Most of my compatriots scoff at this distinction: we don’t feel that we’re particularly happy—and certainly don’t show it by dancing or hugging each other or smiling excessively. In fact, there’s an old saying in Finland advising us that s/he who is happy should hide their happiness (Kell’ onni on se onnen kätkeköön). The UN-sponsored World Happiness Report ranks countries based on a single question of subjective feeling. But it also looks into areas such as income, healthy life expectancy, social support, generosity, freedom to make life choices, and perceptions of corruption. It clearly doesn’t measure individual happiness. Molly Young in a perceptive article in the New York Times Magazine makes the distinction between “affective” and “evaluative” happiness. The Finnish kind is more the latter, like contentedness.

The fact that Finland has ranked so high on this happiness list for such a long time is largely due to the extensive welfare state. Finland is a high-income country with relatively small differences between the rich and poor, at least compared with the USA. We have world class education (although the standards have sunk somewhat in recent years) and universal healthcare. We have a lengthy life expectancy, which stems partly from that access to healthcare, but also from the clean environment and relatively healthy lifestyle, with most people enjoying outdoors activities in nature. Importantly, the Finns have a high level of trust in each other—a lost wallet is likely to be returned to the rightful owner; and we generally trust our elected officials and government employees to be honest. It’s one of the least corrupt countries in the world (which obviously doesn’t mean everyone is squeaky clean).

The welfare state is of course expensive and has resulted in soaring public debt. It reached 82.1% of GDP in the last quarter of 2024 (which is bad, or not so bad, depending on what you compare with; for neighboring Sweden the percentage is just 46.18% but for the mighty USA it is 97.8%—and counting). Maintaining the welfare state translates into a high rate and highly progressive taxation, which is a constant complaint you hear in Helsinki. The current government’s strategy is to shift the tax burden from firms and wealthy individuals to the everyman, relying on the universally discredited trickle-down theory. When it cuts services at the same time, the result is people being squeezed. Which is not popular.

As a result, the biggest winner in the April elections were the Social Democrats, which collected 22.5% of the vote and became the largest party. The voters’ message was clear: no more cuts. However, the money has to come from somewhere. A professor friend of mine, who is quite unhappy with the current government, also indicated that he would not vote for the Social Democrats because of their profligate spending.

One of the issues plaguing Finland is productivity, which is affected by the population structure. Like most European countries, Finland’s population is aging rapidly (most Asian countries, too, including China and Japan are facing the same trend). Another scientist friend of mine attributed many of Finland’s economic problems to this fundamental issue. The dependency ratio—that is, persons below 15 or over 65 years of age compared to working age population—is now 61.1, with 23.6% of people older than 65. With the below-replacement birth rate of just 1.3 children per woman, and the longevity (79.0 years for men and 84.2 years for women), aging of the population structure is inevitable

Except for immigration. Without it, the Finnish population actually decreased by 17,956 people in 2023. In the same year, net migration to the country was 57,914, thus more than compensating for the decline. The immigrants also tend to be younger, working age adults. Like elsewhere in Europe and the United States, immigration is a hot political issue. The neighboring countries—Russia, Estonia and Sweden—have always been top origins of immigrants, with the addition of Ukrainians since Russia’s attack on the country (while the inflow of Russians has been halted by closed borders). However, it is the immigrants and asylum seekers from countries like Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, and Kurds from Iran and Turkey, who get most of the attention.

The Finns Party built their platform largely on opposing immigration and they were for some years very successful in their strategy. Now the latest election results suggest otherwise. They received only 7.8% of the vote in the regional elections and even less (7.6%) at the municipal level.

Russia with which Finland shares a 1,340 km-long border is a problematic neighbor, not least in recent years. Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and beyond prompted Finland to abandon its traditional neutrality and join NATO in 2024. This decision was supported by an overwhelming majority of Finns, including those I talked with. The highly popular President Alexander Stubb has provided solid leadership in the country and beyond when it comes to foreign policy. (Stubb who started his presidency in 2024 came from NCP. However, in Finland when elected, the president habitually gives up his party affiliation to truly unify the entire nation.)

One friend, an art historian told me that, while she has never been a fan of Russia and has never visited Moscow, she used to travel regularly to St. Petersburg, a cosmopolitan city with handsome architecture and great art collections, only about 380 km from Helsinki. There used to be a lot of cross-border traffic while the border was open. My friend confessed to being a bit nostalgic about the trips but she accepts that the city being off-limits is the price we have to pay.

All parties, including the traditionally anti-NATO Left Alliance, supported Finland’s membership in the military alliance. However, a recent poll shows a decrease in trust in NATO since President Trump has cast doubt on American commitment to come to the aid of fellow NATO members. Still, two-thirds of the Finns support NATO membership. Due to Russia’s proximity and the wars Finland fought with the Soviet Union (1939; and 1941-42), Finland, unlike many other Western European countries, never neglected its own defense or relied solely on US security guarantees. In 2023, it spent 2.4% of its GDP on defense and has pledged to increase spending to 3% before the end of the decade. This obviously poses further budgetary challenges and competes with other needs of the welfare state.

Finland is a country where people live close to nature and it is not surprising that the Greens have been relatively strong. This time around, too, they gathered 9.1% of the vote. I was curious why more Finns don’t vote for the Greens (in fact, their share nationally was almost identical to that of the Left Alliance). I asked two of my friends—a musician and a university professor—about their views. Both gave similar answers, having to do with too broad a coalition of special interests, which dilutes the focus and reduces the excitement regarding the Green agenda. This influence of special interests may be similar to the situation of the Democratic Party in the US.

So far, I’ve written about the country as a whole. Helsinki is a bit of an anomaly. Of Finland’s 5.6 million people, about 1.4 million live in the capital region. There NCP remains dominant, although the Social Democrats almost caught up with them. Although the Greens lost somewhat as compared with the 2021 municipal elections, they still remained the third largest party with 17.9% of the vote. In Helsinki, the Finns Party received only 5.5% of the vote. This reflects the fact that Helsinki is the wealthiest, best educated and most cosmopolitan place in the country. Both the NCP and the Social Democrats are largely supported by urbanites and well-educated people. The same goes for the Greens, while the Finns Party and the Center Party tend to be popular outside of the cities.

Like elsewhere, Finnish politicians and people alike face difficult choices. One fundamental tension is between the financial burden of maintaining the welfare state and the growing fiscal deficits. The need to invest more into defense also competes with other priorities.

The Russian war against Ukraine and the generally unstable situation in Europe and the world, has diverted attention from other issues, such as climate change. Still, a recent survey by the Ministry of the Environment shows that almost everyone (91%) is worried about climate change and global biodiversity loss, and 97% of the respondents believe that clean nature enhances people’s health and well-being.

Another tension appears between the need to maintain Finland’s productivity and working-age population and the perceived problems caused by immigration. While Finland overall is still a fairly low-immigration country, as compared with many other European countries, such as France and Germany (apart from policy, there’s no doubt that the northern climate and the challenging language contribute to this), there has been an increase in recent years. This is felt especially with regard to non-European immigrants whose culture may make assimilation in the Finnish society harder. While 85% of immigrants live in cities, the opposition to them is highest outside, as the support to the Finns Party shows.

As population ages in all major regions of the world, except in Africa, and the UN projects that the global population will start shrinking during the second half of this century, many countries have tried establishing pronatal policies encouraging people to have more children. We do have to have a serious debate of population and whether its continued growth is needed or there are other ways to deal with the challenges (look especially to Japan). But that’s an entirely different discussion for another day.

It will be interesting to see which way future directions in the Finnish politics will turn. As a Finn living outside of the country for many years, I for one will be watching it carefully.

[Originally published at https://juhauitto.substack.com on May 12, 2025.]

How population characteristics shape our world, and how we can influence them

Jennifer D. Sciubba, currently President and CEO of Population Reference Bureau, is a political demographer. She is a leading expert in how population trends and composition affect politics and social relations -- and vice versa. This is what makes her analysis more interesting than your run-of-the-mill books on demography. My own background was originally in population geography, so the fundamentals that Sciubba explains in the book are very familiar to me.

Beyond those fundamentals, there is a lot of interesting and insightful in the book. For example, Sciubba points out that neither rapid population growth nor aging are per se not inherently problematic. Instead, their impact depends on the governance, political and economic circumstances. While fertility has dropped to below replacement levles, resulting in population shrinkage without immigration in most parts of the world (including Europe, North America, Japan, China, even Brazil), it remains very high in most of Africa where the societies' ability to accommodate the large cohorts of new entrants into labor force are generally weak. Sub-Saharan Africa contines to be the place with the largest growth in population. Almost 90% of world's population growth until mid-century will take place in lower-middle and low-income countries. This will pose challenges in terms of political stability and pressures to migrate. Sciubba also points out that it is not to poorest people from the poorest countries who migrate, because migration requires a certain amount of financial resources as well as skills to navigate the complex challenges of international migration. This fact casts doubt on the oft-heard justification for foreign aid to help people where they are, so that they will be discouraged to move.

A feature that makes Sciubba's book a lively read is her ample use of historical and current examples to demonstrate the more technical or theoretical points. They range from the impacts of China's one-child policy to the Rwandan genocide; from the relationship between aging societies and peace, to implications of Nigeria's youthful population. (I have to point out an odd slip: At one point, Sciubba places the southern African country of Botswana in the Sahel.)

Although Sciubba mentions climate change in several places, as acting as a stressor and as a driver of migration, it features fairly little in the book. That of course could be the focus of a separate book in itself.

A worthwhile and entertaining read, I'd recommend this book to anyone interesting in how population trends, fertility, mortality and migration shape society all over the world.

People on the move - Coping with immigration

 Immigration was the central issue for one in seven of (likely) voters in the US presidential election of 2024, second only to inflation and high prices, and played a decisive role for many people in deciding whom to vote for.

Likewise in Europe, immigration has dominated much of the public discourse over the past years. Immigration from outside to the European Union (EU) and the United States has increased significantly over the past several decades. In the US, there are now 46.2 million foreign-born persons (yours truly included) or about 13.9% of the total population. In the EU, 42.4 million people, or 9% of the population, were born outside of the Union’s borders. Whether the share of immigrants in Western countries is high or low is open for debate—and it has indeed dominated public discourse almost everywhere.

A 2022 Eurobarometer survey found that almost seven out of ten Europeans overestimate the share of immigrants in their countries. Furthermore, the largest source countries for immigrants tend to be elsewhere in Europe and what we broadly call the West, the list topped by Switzerland, Australia, Iceland, Israel, Norway, the US, and Turkey (Türkiye).

Japan is still an exception among the rich and ageing countries of the Global West. While it maintains its more restrictive immigration policy, the number of foreigners there, too, has grown significantly. According to the Ministry of Justice, there were 2.76 million foreigners living in Japan in 2022 (excluding those there illegally and long-staying tourists) constituting about 2.3% of the total population.

The largest groups of immigrants to Japan come from other Asian countries—China, Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines—as well as Brazil, which has a significant population of ethnic Japanese (with about half a million Japanese residing in and around São Paulo). These same are among the top source countries in the US as well. Following Mexico, the largest groups of immigrants to the States come from India, China, Philippines and Vietnam.

Attitudes towards foreigners vary significantly depending on the kind of migrant and how they arrived in the destination countries. To put it bluntly, few EU citizens are upset about the Swiss or the Norwegians living amongst them (some are more critical of the Americans, although those who want to live in Europe tend to be less provincial in outlook than their average compatriots).

Most of the debate on immigration is concerned with immigrants from poor and conflict-affected countries, and is driven by fears that the importation of cheap unskilled labor from the Global South will undercut salaries and take away jobs in general. There is some truth to this argument: the availability of ample labor for low-paying jobs can reduce the pressure on employers to increase pay in step with rising prices.

However, immigrants often do jobs that natives in rich countries would not take, including in agriculture and the numerous restaurant kitchens everywhere around us.  Without immigrants from Mexico, elsewhere in Central America, and China, consumer prices in the US would certainly go up and many fields would suffer from labor shortages.

Another complaint pertains to social and cultural issues. Some immigrants are seen as holding on to their old ways and often not integrating into their new host countries. In this respect, the US has a better track record than Europe, which has suffered several (and increasing) terrorist attacks by foreigners, several of whom have arrived among legitimate refugees.

Issues such as women’s rights, domestic violence (even honor killings), female genital mutilation, and other persistent features appall the Western hosts. Incoming President Trump has famously fanned the flames of fear of immigrants, claiming i.a. that Mexican immigrants to the US are rapists and murderers, and that immigrants from Haiti eat the pets of Americans. There is no evidence of this and, in fact, native-born Americans are more likely to commit crimes than immigrants.

The issue of illegal immigration is obviously a complicated one. The “crisis on the southern border” was a major theme in the 2024 US election, which concerned Americans of all races and walks of life. Even people who feel positively towards immigration (after all, the country was built upon immigration) tend to think that the situation is out of control and that it would be important to have an orderly process.

Many immigrants who have come to the country through a legal route also see it as unfair that you can enter the country just by showing up at a border post, declaring yourself a refugee facing persecution at home; then get in to wait for their case to pass through the legal process (which takes years) and in the meantime disappear into the country and find illegal work.

The economics of immigration are clear. Immigration overall is correlated with increased productivity and long-term economic development. Multiculturalism also tends to be associated with a richer tapestry of life. No-one can seriously argue that the cuisine of the USA, UK, Germany or Finland has not improved thanks to foreigners coming to live in our countries. However, it is equally clear that extremely rapid movement of people can be disruptive and irrevocably change the nature of communities.

There are also great differences between different groups of immigrants. At one end you have the highly educated professionals, including those who arrived for higher education, who tend to integrate and quickly enrich their new home countries. In the US, where according to the Census Bureau the current median household income is about $80,000 per year, this figure is over $112,000 for Asians, as compared with $85,000 for whites, $65,000 for Hispanics, $61,000 for Native Americans (including Alaskans), and $57,000 for Blacks. The Indian, Persian, Chinese, Japanese and other Asian doctors, engineers and other professionals clearly are doing well in America. It’s also worth noting that immigrants from Nigeria and elsewhere in West Africa are on the average earning more than Americans, including whites.

Which brings us to the differing policies between countries. Canada is well known for its system where higher education and wealth bring points to potential immigrants to move up the queue. Japan has also opened its doors to highly educated foreigners who can help the country stay at the forefront of advanced research: When you enter the campus of any top research university in the country you can’t avoid seeing many un-Japanese faces, mostly from India and elsewhere in South Asia.

In the USA, there are currently more than 1.5 million foreign students (the top countries being India, China and South Korea) and they tend towards STEM majors, such as computer and information sciences and engineering, as well as management. They also dominate graduate studies in STEM subjects. Without them, science and technological development in the US would be far less innovative.

People have always been on the move and, on the whole, this has enriched our lives. What some people these days lament as cultural appropriation has always been the norm. That’s how societies learn and develop. There is no country in the world that has not taken bits and pieces of other nations’ cultures and made them their own.

We now live in a world where, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN body, more than 280 million people—or 3.6% of the world's population—are on the move.

People move for a variety of reasons. Many move in search of a better life and economic opportunities. These two are not necessarily the same, as for many migrant workers better economic opportunities may bring current hardships and dangers. For instance, South Asian and Filippino workers in the Gulf have little recourse against abuses by employers. Still, this does not deter migrant workers: there were 169 million of them in 2019 according to IOM. These migrants and diaspora communities sent $647 billion back to their home countries in 2022, far outpacing any official development assistance these countries receive.

Many people do not move voluntarily. The UN’s refugee organization tells that there were 82.4 million forcibly displaced persons in 2020, including 26.4 million officially recognized refugees. These are people who have fled persecution, armed conflict, or human rights violations in their home areas. Most of them are internally displaced or in neighboring countries, but many of them are also spread around the world. A new category, not yet fully recognized in international law, are the environmental or climate refugees whose livelihoods have been affected by environmental degradation, droughts and other environmental hazards (more on that in a later blog).

People from both categories—economic migrants and refugees—frequently try their luck to get into the more peaceful countries of Europe, North America and Australia. Legally or illegally.

Complicating the problem is that it is rarely the poorest people who migrate. The increase in migration during the past decades has coincided with increased incomes and standards of living in the emigrants’ home countries. Despite this, the wealth differences between countries drive people to seek their luck in richer countries of the world—and who can blame them for that? It does, nevertheless, contradict the often-heard claim that increased development assistance in the departure countries would reduce pressure to emigrate.

Our views of how we should deal with our fellow humans on the move vary considerably. At one end are those who long for a borderless world, like it was hundreds of years ago when you could just walk or ride a camel or sail to a new land and settle there (sometimes replacing or subordinating those already living there). One of them is Gaia Vince, who in her well researched but partial book, Nomad Century, argues for the abolishment of national borders for both moral and economic reasons.

Vince doesn’t seem to see any downsides to accepting an unlimited number of new entrants to any country. She goes as far as to suggest that Swedish policy-makers fear nothing more than the departure of immigrants from the country. Such Pollyannish views would hardly fly with the people of Sweden where foreign gangs (many hailing from North Africa or former Yugoslavia) have turned the peaceful “people’s home” (folkhemmet) into a killing field (unlike in America, it is the foreigners who are driving violent crime in Scandinavia).

At the other end are those who want to keep all foreigners out. We find them everywhere: in Japan where some right-wing nationalists see gaijin corrupting the country; in Finland where violent events involving immigrants have hardened the public attitudes; and in the USA where president-elect Trump has promised to round up and deport 11 million undocumented people living illegally in the country. An analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics suggests that this effort would drive up inflation and shrink the US economy, targeting workers in areas where they will be hard to replace. (Not to mention the logistical challenge and cost of actually rounding up and deporting millions of people.)

Understandably, immigration brings out strong emotions and divides people and communities. Although its impacts can be net-positive, there are many factors that influence the balance. One of them is the speed of the process, which can overwhelm communities. The other is the facility of integration of immigrants into their new environments, which requires effort from both sides.

While multiculturalism can be a richness, the long-term inhabitants in a place have a right to maintain their social norms. We need an immigration policy that is both humane towards the people who need refuge, as well as orderly and fair; one that also takes into account what different types of immigrants can contribute to their new country.

[Published originally at: https://juhauitto.substack.com/p/people-on-the-move-coping-with-immigration]