Lies, Damned Lies, and the Norwegian Bureau of Statistics

As reported in Tuesday night’s news feed, by 2040 half the population of Oslo will be immigrants, according to the Norwegian state statistics bureau.

In the essay below, our Norwegian correspondent The Observer casts a jaundiced eye on this and other aspect of the statistics bureau’s report.

The Observer includes this introduction:

This is my take on the recently published report by the Norwegian Bureau of Statistics (SSB), which predicts that Norwegians will become a minority in Oslo by 2040.

I believe that this will happen a lot sooner.

It’s also worth mentioning that in February 2012 the SSB predicted that the Norwegian population would increase from five to six million in a period of only 13 years (2012 -2025), but now they also claim that the population will increase by a mere 250,000 from 2025 to 2040, which doesn’t make much sense to me.

This is another reason to be highly critical of anything that the SSB publishes.

Lies, political correctness and the SSB

The report

By The Observer

I’ve decided to write this article as a response to a recent report published by the Norwegian bureau of Statistics (SSB) in which they present different population scenarios for Norway for the period 2011-2040. In the report three possible estimates are presented, a low estimate, a middle estimate, and a high estimate. The middle estimate, which SSB consider the most accurate, predicts that the immigrant population in Oslo will rise from 170,000 in 2012 to 387,000 by 2040 which will amount to 50 percent of the total population of the city. For the country as a whole the SSB estimates that the immigrant population will rise from 600,000 in 2012 to 1.5 million by 2040 which according to the report will amount to 24 percent of the overall population.

In the report, the term immigrant refers to persons born abroad and children born to immigrant parents, but not children with one immigrant parent and one Norwegian born parent. From the information presented in the report we can deduce that the total population of Norway will rise from 5 million (March 2012) to 6,250,000 in 2040. (1,500,000 * 100 / 24 = 6,250,000). The report also concludes that approximately 70 percent of the immigrant population in 2040 will have a non-EU background.

Like many other Norwegians, I don’t trust the SSB. I believe that it is a heavily politicized organization which acts as a branch of the political elites in Norway. This distrust is not unfounded, as the SSB on numerous occasions have proven to be incorrect in their predictions concerning immigration by presenting estimates that were too low. It therefore goes without saying that I have serious doubts about the accuracy of this report which I intend to examine more closely in the rest of this article. But before I press, I should mention that I’m not a statistician, nor am I a mathematician, which means that I can’t guarantee the numbers I’m about to present are a hundred percent accurate. I would also like to add that I don’t have access to the raw data that the SSB used to compile their report.

Terminology

My primary concern with the report is the methods of classification that were employed. For instance, the author has chosen — or probably more likely, been instructed by the leadership of the SBB — to identify immigrants as persons born abroad and persons born in Norway to two immigrant parents. Everyone else is classified as Norwegians. This is the biggest flaw in the report, and it’s a monumental one as it paints an incorrect picture of the size of the indigenous ethnic Norwegian population and the immigrant population, which should be the main goal of the report. The result of using such parameters is that a person born in Norway to two Pakistani parents is classified as an immigrant, but if this person marries a Pakistani and brings this person back to Norway their children will be classified as Norwegians. I believe that most ethnic Norwegians would chose slightly different parameters for determining who is a Norwegian.

The most obvious way to identify a Norwegian is by ethnicity. Norway has until recently exclusively been inhabited by Caucasians of Germanic stock, which is a white ethnic group. It is wrong to set this historic fact aside just because it is politically expedient to do so. Another important criterion is of course the cultural heritage of Norway. Many of those classified as Norwegians in this report have a completely different cultural heritage and many of them are in fact hostile to traditional Norwegian core values. A result of SSB’s rather imaginative way of classifying individuals is that people who have recently relocated to Norway from cultures that are completely alien to the majority Norwegian population, and who belong to completely different racial groups are considered to be just as Norwegian as the descendants of those whose ancestors have lived in Norway for the last 10,000 years. It may be the politically correct thing to do, but morally it’s incorrect, as it ignores the fact that there actually exists a unique Norwegian culture and a unique Norwegian ethnic group.

The main problem

And this leads us directly to the main problem with this report. The author foresees the immigrant population reaching 50 percent in Oslo by 2040, and for the country as a whole 24 percent. But in my opinion this raises more questions than it answers, because the report doesn’t give us a very clear picture of the cultural and ethnic composition of Norway anno 2040. We know from the report that there will be at least — provided that the report is accurate — 1,050,000 individuals with a non-EU cultural background residing in Norway in 2040 (1,500,000 * 70/100 = 1,050,000). But the actual number is going to be much higher, because of the way immigrants and descendants of immigrants are classified. There will be a large proportion of individuals with a non-Norwegian cultural and ethnic background classified as Norwegians, and thus the projections for Oslo and Norway become rather meaningless, as they don’t really tell us anything about the actual future demographic scenario for the country.

And demographics are important, regardless of what the authorities think. The demographic composition of the city of Oslo plays an integral part in where ethnic Norwegians choose to live, which schools they choose to send their children to, the price of real estate and quality of life. The eastern parts of Oslo have seen a massive exodus of ethnic Norwegians and an equally massive influx of non-Western immigrants. This process is going to pick up speed as the immigrant population rises.

There is also a financial aspect attached to the demographic transformation as non-Western immigrants rely more heavily on welfare payments, and are unfortunately over-represented in crime statistics.

Ethnic Norwegian population

The report also predicts that Norwegians will comprise 76 percent of the total population in Norway in 2040. This amounts to 4,750,000 individuals (6,250,000 * 0.76 = 4,750,000). The impression given here is that ethnic Norwegians will still constitute a solid majority in 2040 considering that they will make up 75 percent of the total population. The problem here is that this figure doesn’t solely encompass 4,750,000 ethnic Norwegians. The real number is going to be a lot more modest, which brings us to the most important section of this article.

I will now attempt to estimate the future number of ethnic Norwegians, given current immigration policies, birth rates and assuming that the political situation remains unchanged. Before I start running through the numbers I would also like to add that the SSB published a report in February 2012 in which they predicted that the population of Norway would pass the six million mark in 2025. I will base my calculations on this figure.

As I mentioned earlier in this article, I’m not a statistician, nor do I have all the available raw data that the SSB had when they made their predictions. But fortunately there are relevant data available that enables us to make a fairly accurate prediction about the future of the ethnic Norwegian population provided, of course, that the current trends remain the same. The numbers that I’m relying on to make my calculations are the total Norwegian population for 1975 which was 4,000,000 (included 50,000-60,000 immigrants) and the birth rates of all women living in Norway from 1976 to 2011.

The data show us that up until 1975 the birth rates in Norway were above 2.1, which were essential in order to maintain population numbers. From 1976 and onwards the birth rates in Norway dropped below 2.1 and became negative, meaning that current population numbers couldn’t be maintained. The data also show us that the average birth rate for women (immigrants included) in Norway between 1976 and 2011 was 1.85.

By extrapolating the data we’re able to fairly accurately predict the size of the ethnic Norwegian population in the coming generations. Other factors will of course also affect the equation, such as delayed demographic reactions, an increase in life expectancy and the percentage of girls born vs. boys, etc., but we’re not going to include those factors here.

Another thing worth keeping in mind is that the birth rates for ethnic Norwegian women are lower than 1.85, as non-Western women living in Norway are driving up the rate by giving birth to more children than the national average. Even so I’ll use 1.85, which means that my predictions are going to be very conservative.

Birth rates and descendants

1.00 = 500 descendants per 500 men/500 women
1.20 = 600 descendants per 500 men/500 women
1.40 = 700 descendants per 500 men/500 women
1.60 = 800 descendants per 500 men/500 women
1.80 = 900 descendants per 500 men/500 women
1.85 = 925 descendants per 500 men/500 women
1.90 = 950 descendants per 500 men/500 women
2.00 = 1000 descendants per 500 men/500 women

Ethnic Norwegian population for the next four generations based on a birth rate of 1.85, a population of 4,000,000 and a generational factor of 25 years

1.85 per 1,000,000 = 925,000 * 4.000000 = 3,700,000 (in 2000)
1.85 per 1,000,000 = 925,000 * 3.700000 = 3,422,500 (in 2025)
1.85 per 1,000,000 = 925,000 * 3.422550 = 3,165,812 (in 2050)
1.85 per 1,000,000 = 925,000 * 3.165812 = 2,928,376 (in 2075)

By using the two most important variables when determining the size of the Norwegian ethnic population, namely birth rates and total population at a specific date and use this as the basis for our predictions we find that the Norwegian ethnic population is declining rapidly. I’m not claiming that the numbers I have come up with are a 100% scientifically correct, as there are numerous other factors that need to be considered when determining exact numbers, but it gives us a pretty accurate picture of the approximate population.

One of the most striking discoveries we make when we extrapolate documented birth rates over the last 25 years and compare those with the recently published SSB report is that there is a huge disparity in the actual number of ethnic Norwegians and the number of individuals that the SSB has chosen to classify as Norwegians. The SSB predicts that there will be 4,750,000 Norwegians by 2040, but by using a mathematical approach we see that the more plausible number is likely to be somewhere between 3.4 and 3.2 million. That is a disparity of more than 1 million, and it is quite alarming. At the same time there is also a huge disparity in the reported number of immigrants predicted to live in Norway in 2040 and the accurate numbers. The report claims that the figure is likely to be 1,500,000, but when we do our calculations we discover that the number is closer to 3,000,000, which is an error margin of 100 percent. Also remember that my calculations are conservative, as I have used a very high birth rate for ethnic Norwegians.

I find it hard to believe that the SSB and the authorities are unaware of this gross inconsistency between the reality and the bogus assertions made in these projections. My guess is that they have deliberately conspired to muddy the waters in an attempt to try and pacify the majority ethnic Norwegian population and to convince them that there simply are no grounds to claim that Norwegians are going to end up as a minority in their own country in the immediate future. But as I have shown in this article, the opposite is true. Ethnic Norwegians will become a minority in their own country somewhere in the next couple of decades if proper and decisive political steps aren’t taken.

Based on the above, I think it is very dishonest and on the border of criminality of the SSB and the political elites in Norway to deliberately try and pull the wool over the eyes of their compatriots on this very important issue.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that I haven’t included factors such as emigration, which will play an important part in the future. It is highly likely that emigration is going to increase for those who have the required skills and financial means to seek greener pastures elsewhere as the reduced quality of life and ethnic and cultural differences become more noticeable in Norway. This factor will speed up the decline of the ethnic Norwegian populations even further.

The report by the SSB should be exposed for what it is, namely a tool for the ruling political elites in Norway to continue their current anti-Norwegian policies, which amounts to a deliberate cultural and ethnic genocide. Even today the tensions are simmering just below the surface. What will happen thirty years from now if the authorities keep insisting on pursuing their multicultural dream is a thought that I would rather not entertain.