NextGen: Why Australia’s low birth rate is a problem ‘far worse than imagined’

Australia’s birth rate declining to the lowest level ever recorded is a haunting preview of what’s to come for future generations.

For decades we’ve been told that there are too many of us on this planet.

That humanity was multiplying at an unsustainable rate and doomed to suffer the hardships of overpopulation.

It meant that when Elon Musk began tweeting (X’ing?) about birth rates, I at first shook my head and laughed.

It all felt to me like a convenient excuse for him to continue his quest to populate the world with mini-Musks.

Then I started looking into it and I realised that the problem was far worse than I ever imagined.

In Western countries around the world, we have fallen far below the ‘replacement level’ - the number of kids that is required to sustain a nation’s population.

Once thought to be around 2.1, a new paper released in April from the Public Library of Science has readjusted the number upwards to about 2.7.

Australia’s birth rate declined to the lowest level ever recorded at just 1.5.

In the 1950s, women worldwide were having 4.9 children on average. Those days are long gone.

The United States is at 1.62. South Korea is less than 1. And in 2023, Australia’s birth rate declined to the lowest level ever recorded at just 1.5.

Japan has long been the poster child for this crisis. Its birth rate has fallen to 1.15, and its population of 124 million is projected to shrink to 87 million by 2070, with nearly 40% of citizens aged 65 or older.

It is a haunting preview of what is to come.

As populations age and shrink, we will be relying on fewer active workers to support the economy, dooming younger generations to a future of higher taxes and debt as they take on an increasing share of responsibility.

They will face the daunting task of keeping the economy and security strong in an increasingly uncertain world.

No nation thrives without new life.

The reasons for this decline are in two parts preventable and inevitable.

As societies modernise, economic opportunities grow, children cease to be crucial agricultural labour, and women gain access to education and contraception.

Birth rates fall from six to around two – the standard modernisation story, a near-universal transition.

Yet in recent decades, rates have continued to fall even further past this point.

The reasons are painfully clear: rising living costs and the outsized expense of raising a child.

Ask any young couple today about their plans for home ownership and you’ll most likely hear a laugh - so how could these same families justify having a child - a decision that will cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars?

There has also been a rise in ‘doomerism’ - a gloomier outlook on bringing children into a world that some speculate is destined climate devastation or some other unforeseen emergency.

Rion Ahl achieved an ATAR score of 99.95 in 2020 when Covid-19 lockdowns crippled Year 12 Picture: David Caird

Ironically, it is this mentality that in many cases may precipitate a global population collapse before any other global disaster

eventuates.

The solutions proposed so far sound like desperate acts in a crumbling amphitheatre.

Mass immigration may have once been a simple fix, but when global fertility rates are falling together, there is no longer a surplus population to draw from.

Government baby bonuses have not moved the needle enough either.

Russia reportedly even considered turning off access to the internet and lights between 10pm and 2am to encourage couples to spend time together.

So if all of this doesn’t work, we need to look to something deeper.

In 2004, the government’s’ ‘baby bonus’ slogan was to have ‘one for mum, one for dad and one for the country’.

Slogans do not build families, but the idea is right.

We need a redefinition of our family values so we can restore a national desire to bring children into the world.

We have built societies obsessed with individual achievement, consumption and personal freedom where children have become a lifestyle choice rather than a natural continuation of life – a fundamental act that sustains human civilisation

itself.

This requires a cultural renaissance that empowers parents.

This means more positive parental figures in our media as well as sustained public discourse about the value of parenthood. For one, our trashy reality needs a revamp.

This means workplaces that embrace maternal flexibility, not as a reluctant concession but as a necessary investment.

And it means housing policies that do not force young couples into perpetual transience.

In the end, no policy can overcome a cultural value that sees children as burdens rather than blessings and our greatest task, then, is to transform our values.

The true wealth of Australia has never been in its mines or cities, but in the continuation of the generations who call this lucky country home.

Originally published as NextGen: Why Australia’s low birth rate is a problem ‘far worse than imagined’