Partisan fertility gap in Finland: Regional and temporal analysis of national elections

The link between political orientation and fertility may offer insight into the sociopsychological factors influencing family formation. Conservative voters have more children than liberal voters, allegedly due to more traditional values. However, the rise of right-wing populist parties has also been linked to fertility decline due to decreased societal trust. Few studies have directly explored the role of values or trust in the partisan fertility gap. Here we test both explanations using regional indicators of traditional values and trust in Finland, where support for the right-wing populist Finns Party has increased, and fertility declined, during the 2000s. Using national register and survey data covering four national elections in 2007–2019 and spatial panel models, we examined how municipality-level support for the Finns Party was associated with regional and temporal fertility differences, and whether differences in traditional values or generalized or institutional trust contributed to this association. Higher support for the right-wing populist party was associated with higher fertility rate, and this association was related to temporal changes in support but not with the average regional differences between municipalities. The associations were explained by traditional values but not by generalized or institutional trust. Our results show that the changes in right-wing populist party support are related to changes in fertility rates across Finnish municipalities and suggest that fertility decline is driven by changes in traditional values.