What Erling Haaland can teach ageing Europe
As birth cohorts shrink, societies can no longer rely on demographic weight to renew themselves. A commentary by Arnstein Aasve
What is the link between the talented Norwegian footballer Erling Haaland and “The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change”, a 1965 article by the American sociologist Norman B. Ryder?
It is a stretch, I know, but hear me out.
There are many remarkable things about Erling Haaland. On a personal level, I am delighted that people now pronounce my surname correctly.
More importantly, Haaland offers an unexpected way to think about Ryder’s argument.
In his classic article, published in the American Sociological Review, Ryder argued that societies renew themselves through cohort replacement. Each new generation enters with what he called “unfamiliar competing responses”, gradually reshaping institutions, practices and culture. (PubMed)
That mechanism works most powerfully when the incoming cohort has sufficient numerical weight. A large generation does not merely bring new ideas. It has the mass required to force institutions to respond to them.
That is precisely what many ageing societies can no longer take for granted. Across most of the low-fertility world, each new cohort is smaller than the one that preceded it. The traditional engine of social renewal therefore runs on less fuel with every generation.
If renewal can no longer come from numbers, it must come from completion. By completion, I mean designing institutions so that as many members of each cohort as possible can participate, develop their abilities and reach their potential.
A society that cannot replace a small generation with a larger one can no longer afford to discard people along the way.
So what does this have to do with Erling Haaland?
Norway stumbled upon part of the answer decades ago. Its “Children’s Rights in Sports” framework limits rankings and elite competition among younger children, protects their freedom to choose which sports they play and seeks to prevent cost from becoming a barrier to participation.
The system was not designed to address demographic decline. It was designed for a small country that did not want to lose participants before they had the chance to develop. In practice, it functions as a low-attrition model, prioritising participation and gradual development over early selection. (idrettsforbundet.no)
Haaland shows what can emerge from such a system. As a child, he practised several sports. He was not forced to specialise immediately, placed under constant pressure or filtered out before his abilities had fully developed. His talent did not have to survive a selection machine designed to eliminate most children before adolescence.
This does not mean that Norway’s sporting system mechanically produces elite footballers. Haaland is exceptional. But his trajectory illustrates a broader institutional principle: delaying selection does not necessarily lower standards. It can expand the pool from which excellence eventually emerges.
Now imagine applying the same principle to education.
Education systems, labour markets and welfare states were built in an era when relatively large cohorts could compensate for high levels of exclusion, failure and wasted potential. Institutions could lose some people because another, often larger generation was coming behind them.
That demographic insurance policy is disappearing.
Smaller cohorts require a different institutional logic. Education systems must identify and develop abilities rather than filter students prematurely. Labour markets must integrate people who would previously have remained inactive or marginal. Welfare states must invest more effectively in every child because the economic and social cost of losing even one potential worker is rising.
This is the connection between Ryder and Haaland. Ryder explained how new generations transform societies. Haaland’s Norway suggests how that transformation can continue when new generations no longer possess the strength of numbers.
Norway arrived at this model for reasons that had little to do with demography. The rest of the low-fertility world should adopt it deliberately.
IEP Bocconi does not express opinions of its own. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the authors.
