Still fewer children in rural Norway
Three out of four of the Norwegian municipalities have fewer one-year-olds than 30 years ago. During the same period, there were 3,400 more one-year-olds in Norway.
The number of one-year-olds has increased in 90 municipalities and stood still in five. In the remaining 261 municipalities, the number of one-year-olds has decreased between 1989 and 2019, writes Aftenposten.
The newspaper has extracted figures from Statistics Norway (SSB) for the number of one-year-olds in all municipalities at the beginning of 1989 and 2019.
Two thirds of the increase has taken place in Oslo, Bærum, Asker, Lillestrøm, Ullensaker, Kristiansand, Stavanger, Sandnes, Bergen and Trondheim.
In almost all of Northern Norway and the vast majority of inland municipalities in southern Norway, there has been a decrease in the number of one-year-olds.
In 62 municipalities in Northern Norway, the decrease is at least a quarter. In 27 municipalities in Northern Norway, the number of one-year-olds has more than halved in 30 years.
Researcher Marianne Tønnessen at Statistics Norway describes the Norwegian migration pattern as follows:
”Young people move from the village. The opportunities for education are first and foremost in the cities, and there are also many exciting jobs. The children are therefore born there, but after a few years, many people move out of the city. Then they often move to the towns around the cities,” she says.
© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today
