Australia’s fertility rate has plummeted to a record low as increasing numbers 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.
The average age of an Australian mother has risen to 31.9 years, unchanged from the same peak level reached in 2022, according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Wednesday.
ANU Canberra Emeritus Professor of Demography Peter McDonald said the long-term trend driving down birth rates – which have been falling from a peak of 3.5 in 1961 – is because prospective parents they delay pregnancy.
“This has been gradually reducing the Australian birth rate, with some increases, for about 50 years,” Professor McDonald told Daily Mail Australia on Wednesday.
“As they settle 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.”
He said governments should worry if the lower fertility rate is not something caused by people’s intentions but because they are unable to do so.
Australia’s fertility rate has fallen to a record low, according to new Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released this week (file image)
Australia’s fertility rate has been declining since peaking at 3.5 babies per mother in 1961 (pictured is a graph of the fertility rate from 1935 to 2023).
“We can’t delay births until women are 40 or else we won’t have births,” he said.
Professor McDonald said when women delay having children it means they tend to have fewer babies.
“What is decreasing is that women have three, four, five children, not an increase in women who do not have children, but that is always possible,” he said.
The professor said there were two policy levers that governments could use 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.”
Although the Albanian government has invested $5.4 billion to subsidize cheaper childcare, Professor McDonald says there is still room for improvement.
‘The Productivity Commission recently produced a report calling for more support for childcare. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see the government or even the opposition move in that direction,” he said.
However, Professor McDonald said that in Australia the intention to have children had remained stable over the past 50 years (file image)
ANU Emeritus Professor of Demography Peter McDonald (pictured) said governments had cause for concern if parents who wanted to have children were unable to have them.
The biggest warning sign that there may not be enough children to replenish an aging population is a change in the proportion of women choosing not to have children, Professor McDonald said.
Japan and South Korea are countries where a large proportion of women do not have children: about 30 percent of Japanese women do not give birth during their fertile years.
However, Professor McDonald said that in Australia the intention to have children has remained stable over the past 50 years.
“It may be financially difficult to have children, but a lot of people really want to have children,” she said.
“While people want to have children as part of their lives, they will do so despite some economic difficulties.”
Professor McDonald said the overall number of births in Australia was being boosted by migration, but not by a higher fertility rate.
“The number of births remains at a high level in Australia because immigrants are of childbearing age (between 25 and 40 years for women),” he said.
“It is not because immigrant women have more births than those of the native population, but because they add to the population that has given birth.”
