Adoptions in Finland since 1987; source: Statistics Finland
Finland’s national agency tracking the country’s health and other data, called Statistics Finland, provides complete, accurate data on all adoptions in Finland. The Nordic country had less than 300 in 2020.
So here we have, again, another country that has mandated the counting of all adoptions–the way public health systems should work in modern countries, when those countries have functional national health systems.
The United States, by comparison, does not have such a system. In fact, it has a fractured national and state and local health public health systems in terms of coordination and funding and in addressing population health issues.
In addition, adoptions outside of intercountry adoption are not tracked in the United States as an explicitly desired outcome by the U.S. adoption system to hide its massive impact on our country, our residents, and even our collective population health.
We are lousy, and the way to fail at every step to be a functional nation is glaringly obvious again through adoption data and a simple country-to-country comparison.
Oh, by the way, Finland barely has any adoptions, and the numbers are actually dropping in recent years. Kudos, Finland, for a job well done!
Finland also has a robust national health system, and they are healthier and live longer than we do in the USA. I could go on, but I’ll stop there. I’m exhausted already.
I completely agree with you although I hadn’t thought about adoption being related to the public health system. Are you stating that adoption should be a public health concern and that’s where adoptions should be tracked? Every state seems to know how many adoptions take place within its boundaries. I assume that’s done via the legal system.
Hi Gretchen. Thanks for visiting and writing me about this. I’ve answered your questions about public health and adoption on this post. https://www.howluckyuare.com/adoption-rights-adoptees-must-seen-public-health-issues/
And, no, there is no data anywhere, by any state of federal agency, that collects and reports on ALL adoptions. If you can find that, please share with everyone so we’ll know. It’s not mandated to be reported and collected by states and territories or by any federal agency, such as the CDC. I’m referring specifically to ALL adoption statistics. See this post about that. https://www.howluckyuare.com/another-census-will-fail-to-count-all-u-s-adoptees/
If you can share where you’ve got evidence (not the complete guesstimate by the pro-adoption group NCFA), please share it. You may be referring to NCFA’s entirely made up number that is not based on hard data. That is often reported as “fact,” and most reporters lazily trust NCFA because they never question a group that promotes adoption. It’s worth spending time to read the footnotes and see how they always make guesses that lack true census data.
Finally there is rigorous data now collected for all inter-country adoptions because of the U.S. becoming a signatory to the Hague Convention, which is tracked by the U.S. State Department. Find that here. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/Intercountry-Adoption/adopt_ref/adoption-statistics-esri.html?wcmmode=disabled