It’s a fact that can no longer be ignored — Australia’s birthrate, like most of the world, is in decline and projected to fall even further.

The 2026 Intergenerational Report, released on Monday, shows the trend of smaller families is all but baked into Australian society.

The total fertility rate (TFR) is projected to reach 1.5 children per woman in 2030-31. Beyond that, it is projected to fall even further, dropping to 1.34 children per woman by 2065-66.

Just three years ago, when the last IGR was released, Australia’s fertility rate was expected to stabilise at 1.62 babies per women by 2030-31 and remain at that level until 2062-63. The additional decline follows the trend of the past 50 years – women are postponing having children, which makes it increasingly less likely they will have three or more. The replacement rate for the population is 2.1 babies per women.

But a combination of factors, “including greater access to contraception, more time spent in education, career establishment, longer periods living with parents, and delays in forming partnerships and having children”.

Calculating Australia’s fertility rate has always been a more complicated story than some of the numbers suggest. That’s in part due to Australia’s migration workforce, which inflates the numbers of the population, but is less likely to be having children, given the temporary nature of most of Australia’s visa program.

But increasingly, financial insecurity has played a role. Millennials in most industrialised nations have been having less children than their parents, with higher levels of student debt, lower wages in real terms, less support, higher prices, unaffordable and insecure housing combining with increasing care responsibilities for ageing parents playing a major role.

Colloquially known as the “sandwich generation”, millennials, the oldest of who are now in their mid-40s, are considered the harbingers of what is becoming a generational trend to not have children. This has continued, despite global events that usually prompt a baby boom in response.

The global pandemic lockdown was expected to create a baby boom that would address falling birth rates, in much the same the Great Depression and World War II did. But despite a slight, short term bump, there was no such correction. 

This is just one small part of the IGR. It’s designed to provide a guide of what the three Ps that underline the budget – population, productivity and participation – are expected to look like for the next four decades.

The report is used to shape policy and highlight gaps. But it cannot account for shocks, like the pandemic, which can completely knock out projections.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers presented his second IGR in the context of global unrest, second wave inflation and sweeping technological change.

The IGR is supposed to provide guidelines for policy. But with more and more global uncertainty, the increasingly obvious impacts of global warming and neoliberal failures, mapping the future is an almost impossible task.

This article was originally published on The Point. Read the original article.

Republished under Creative Commons — Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International — CC BY-ND 4.0.