State to consider Senate inquiry into population as figures show migrant women lead baby boom
MIGRANT women are leading the state’s population boom with exclusive data compiled for The Daily Telegraph showing more than a third of all babies born in NSW are the children of immigrant mothers. Here is the full breakdown of births to foreign-born mums in NSW.
NSW
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MORE than a third of babies born in NSW are the children of immigrant mothers, with the rate jumping by 33 per cent in just 10 years.
Data exclusively compiled for The Daily Telegraph reveals 38.2 per cent of babies born across the state are the children of foreign-born mums.
It comes as the number of babies born to Australian-born women drops to the lowest on record, with fewer than 60,000 recorded in NSW each year.
The federal government is on the brink of launching a Senate inquiry into population, with WA Liberal senator Dean Smith pressuring his colleagues to conduct a year-long investigation into migrant intake and where they should settle.
The figures show that 41 per cent of mums in Western Australia are born overseas — the highest proportion in Australia.
Mr Smith has a history of spearheading controversial pushes in the Coalition after successfully agitating for same-sex marriage.
Exclusive Australian Bureau of Statistics data reveals Indian and Chinese mothers are behind the surge in immigrant mothers in NSW.
There has a been a 236 per cent jump in babies born to Indian-born mothers in the decade from 2006, and a 159 per cent rise in babies born to Chinese-born women.
Over this same time period the births by New Zealand and UK-born mums dropped.
The boom in migrant mothers since 2006 is startling compared with just a 12 per cent difference in the numbers between then and 1975, when these statistics were first collected.
The number of babies born to Australian women in NSW dropped from 65,923 in 2011 to a historic low of 59,348 in 2016 — a decrease of almost 10 per cent.
Social analyst David Chalke said the figures reveal Australia is losing young Anglo-Saxon women and “more than replacing them” with mums from non-English speaking backgrounds.
Australian-born women’s fertility rate dropped from 1.88 births per woman in 2006 to 1.79 in 2016 but immigrant women tend to have more babies. Lebanon-born women had Australia’s highest birthrate in 2016 with an average 4.03 children.
“Among many of the migrant groups, culturally it is more appropriate to have lots of children — it is very much a cultural thing,” Mr Chalke said.
“If you have disproportionate number of young women from non-English speaking backgrounds in the population they will represent a higher proportion of births because they’re in the child-rearing age group.”
Mr Chalke said the average Australian woman will typically have “one trophy child in her mid-30s and then go back to follow up her career”.
McCrindle social researcher Geoff Brailey said people in baby-making years often left NSW for more affordable and larger abodes interstate if they didn’t see the right housing stock.
Labor immigration and border protection spokesman Shayne Neumann said any reforms to Australia’s migration program “should improve its integrity and make the visa system easier to understand”.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian declined to comment.
Westmead dad Deepak Sharma, 33, left India for NSW in 2010 to start a family with his wife Ranjana, 31. Their son Aaryan was born in Sydney two years ago.
“Australia is a beautiful country … Sydney is a great place to raise our kids,” Mr Sharma said.
And Western Sydney couple Rajhu Rawal, 31, and wife Sowmiya, 27, left India two years ago for work in NSW. They now enjoy going out for walks with their two-year-old, Darshan.
“We love the place. The environment and the people are beautiful,” he said.