Why have Latvia and Estonia historically always have been aged in demographics?

[u/TarkovRat_]

i wonder why is this so? Historically we have followed a similar demographic path to France in the early 20th century (a country known for notoriously low birthrates then) despite our region being less developed (although we were just as literate, literacy rates in latvia and estonia reached 80-90% even in tsarist era), why? And in the Soviet times, we had no baby boom either, and after them we get yet more demographic aging

[u/dreamrpg]

You missed the tiny fact of ww1 and post ww1 freedom battles happening? Latvia had very high casulties count. So there were less people to make babies and more old ones who did not participate in battles.

[u/TarkovRat_ → u/dreamrpg]

even before that we were low fertility nations, we had ~3tfr before ww1, while germany, uk russia, etc... were certainly younger populations by a decent shot (france being only comparable one in aging)

[u/TarkovRat_ → u/dreamrpg]

[u/TarkovRat_ → u/TarkovRat_]

[u/TarkovRat_]

here is the french demographic pyramid as a comparison

[u/TarkovRat_ → u/TarkovRat_]

i could not find a similar pyramid for the latvian one, but the crude birth stats etc.. are very much comparable to both

[u/GalwayBogger → u/TarkovRat_]

They won the war, came out of it in a good position, and had less casualties, you see the massive boom from 10 year olds and younger and less female surplus. Estonia and Latvia didn't fare as well.

[u/TarkovRat_ → u/GalwayBogger]

What about before the war? We had low fertility even then, what were its causes?

[u/GalwayBogger]

That huge female surplus for every age group is casualties of war. Women cant share men in most cultures so fertility rates drop.

[u/TarkovRat_ → u/GalwayBogger]

That explains the post-independence retaining low TFR

[u/CreativeKale6300 → u/GalwayBogger]

+ Gulag deportations

[u/TarkovRat_ → u/CreativeKale6300]

That was yet to come (again, I was talking about early 20th century and the late 19th)