Outspoken billionaire Elon Musk has warned Australians about the country’s declining birth and fertility rates.
The Tesla founder took to social media on Thursday to address reports that Australia’s birth rate had fallen to a record low as a growing number of couples and women decide to have children later in life.
There were 286,998 births recorded in Australia in 2023, a four per cent decline from the 300,684 recorded in 2022, representing a fertility rate of 1.5 babies per woman, also below the previous low of 1.65 in 2022.
It was the lowest number of births since 2006, when Australia’s population was at least two million fewer.
In response to the figures, Musk wrote: “Birth rates continue to plummet. Demographic collapse is approaching.
Musk has been warning for years about declining birth rates in developed countries and said the trend represents a significant risk to humanity.
“Demographic collapse due to low birth rates is a much greater risk to civilization than global warming,” he stated in 2022.
Musk said: “Many people are under the impression that the current number of humans on the planet is unsustainable.
‘That is totally false. In reality, the population density is quite low.’
Outspoken billionaire Elon Musk has warned Australians about the country’s declining birth and fertility rates.
Australia’s fertility rate has been declining since peaking at 3.5 babies per mother in 1961.
Musk and other concerned experts fear that societies will end up with “more grandparents than grandchildren” and face an “infinity” of challenges, such as too few young people to work, pay taxes and care for the elderly.
Emeritus Professor of Demography Peter McDonald at the Australian National University in Canberra said there are several reasons why young Australian women are delaying having children.
‘By settling into a career, younger people have been putting off life and settling down, staying longer in education, traveling and all those things lead to things happening later.
“We can’t delay births until women are 40 or else we won’t have births,” he said.
The professor said governments could use two policy levers to increase fertility rates.
“One is affordable housing and the other is affordable child care,” he said.
“It takes a long time to get affordable housing, but they could do affordable daycare.”
Even though Australia’s fertility rate has fallen to a record low, the government is not considering reviving the birth bonus.
‘It’s not something we’ve been discussing. “Obviously I’m interested in the numbers,” Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles told Seven’s Sunrise program on Thursday.
‘We want to do everything we can to make it easier for families and couples to have children and we are doing that. It is important that we have a sustainable birth rate.’
The baby bonus was established by the Howard government and provided lump-sum payments of $3,000 to new parents of children born on or after July 2004.
Then-treasurer Peter Costello urged families to “have one for mom, one for dad and one for the country.”