Australians have seemingly forgotten how to reproduce. Despite living in the most technologically advanced of times, it would appear we no longer know how to do the basics.
Fertility rates in this country have plummeted since the 1960s. However, the speed of decline in recent years is particularly concerning with the fertility rate as high as 1.88 in 2013 before falling to an all-time low of 1.5 births per woman in 2023.1 ANU Demographer Liz Allen said this meant Australia was “staring down the barrel of no return” from a population perspective.
The equation is simple. As more people retire from the workforce, the financial burden on younger people increases and the quality of life falls for everyone, resulting in widespread economic hardship. To make matters worse, our one source of population growth—immigration—is a band-aid solution with a range of downstream consequences relating to social cohesion, cost-of-living and crime.
