Sweden’s population growth in 2020 is the lowest it has been in 15 years due to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic stalling mass immigration.
Statistics Sweden figures reveal that in the first six months of this year, Sweden saw half the population growth of the same period in 2019.
Tomas Johansson, a population statistician at Statistics Sweden, explained that there were two factors relating to the coronavirus outbreak that has led to the decline: a lack of migrants coming in and an increased death rate due to the spread of the virus.
According to Sveriges Radio, the number of deaths in Sweden in the first six months of this year, 51,000, is the highest level the country has seen since the famine of 1869.
“The corona pandemic has also had other consequences in the population,” Johansson explained.
“Fewer than usual get married, for example,” he said.
The number of marriages this year is the lowest since the turn of the millennium. Divorces, meanwhile, are on the rise.
Earlier this year, it was reported that as much as 73 per cent of Sweden’s population growth in 2019 was driven by mass migration.
The Scandinavian country saw 97,404 people added to the country’s population last year. Since 2010, Sweden has granted 1.2 million residency permits, the largest numbers being from chain migration — or “family reunion/reunification” — economic migrants, and asylum seekers.
Mass migration has seen the Swedish population increasing from 9.4 million in 2010 to 10.3 million by the end of the decade, with one in five Swedish residents being born abroad.
Sweden’s birthrate is also well below replacement levels at 1.78 children per woman — except among foreign-born women, whose birthrate rate is over two children per woman.