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Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday, the thirteenth of June. I'm Zara Seidler.
I'm Billy fitz Simon's.
This week, the United Nations released its most comprehensive report yet on the state of fertility around the world. The report confirmed the global fertility rates are dropping and that it's not necessarily for the reasons we're often told it is. In today's podcast, we'll unpack the findings of the UN report, how this is manifesting here in Australia, and how governments can address this issue moving forward.
Zara, when we talk about fertility rates, I feel like we often talk about specific countries. So I know, in Japan, for example, we often talk about the declining birth rates the big way. But it's interesting that this report is looking at the globe as a whole and what is happening absolutely everywhere with the fertility rate.
Yeah, So wh it's such a big report because it is looking at the state of play across a bunch of different countries from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and it's finding a similar kind of through line or a similar trend.
So what did it find?
So essentially the shorthands is that it found that global fertility rates are declining across the board. According to that same report, the human population is projected to reach its peak within the century, but then from there it's going to fall. So I feel like for our whole life, we've spoken about how you know, we have more people on Earth than ever an overpopulation, But what this is saying is that actually that human population is going to fall.
One in four people are currently living in a country where the size of the population is understood to have already hit that peak, and so I think it's helpful to paint the picture here in Australia, where our birth rate has been falling for decades, and I know you and I have spoken about this on the pod before. If we go back to the fifties, the birth rate
in Australia was three point five babies per woman. In two thousand and eight, that birth rate was two point zero two children per woman, and then in twenty twenty three it was one point five children per woman.
Wow, so it has dropped quite significantly.
Yeah, it's only going in one way, and it's pretty clear that there is this trend over the last few decades of women in Australia having less children.
I think it's helpful whenever we're talking about a declining birth rate to understand why it can be considered an issue, particularly an economic issue, which you don't often think about, you know, women having babies as something that is global or even on the specific country level, an economic issue for that country.
But it kind of is.
Yeah. I mean, it's something you and I strangely find ourselves speaking about a lot, and certainly when you've sat down and interviewed treasurers or shadow treasures, this is something that's come up. The reason it's an issue is that basically we have an aging population at the same time as we have a shrinking working population. And so if I just unpack that, really clearly we've got people getting older and living for longer, which is great. I mean
it depends on who you are. Objectively a good thing living standards, but fewer people that are then of working age and who are contributing to the economy, and so the consequence of that is that there is this increased
economic pressure on governments. So, like I just said, that's because we have less people being able to work and pay taxes, which is the key way that the government raises money, and more people in that aging population who require assistance, whether that be health services, the pension, you know, whatever it is that they need in their old age. There is this incongruence between where the money is coming
from and what it's being spent on. And the other thing I think that isn't spoken about very often though, is the fact that it means there's a lot of pressure on younger people to care for old people and the economic burden that that can carry if they have to leave the workforce for that.
So to put it really simply, and maybe this is too simplistic, but we have less people paying taxes and more people needing tax payer money.
Correct, got it.
So we know that it can be a bad thing for economies. What did this report tell us about why there is this declining birth rate?
Yeah? Well, I mean this is the golden question and it's certainly the one that this UN report was trying to answer. I'll just quickly run through what this report actually was because I'd certainly never seen anything of its kind. Essentially, it was undertaken by the UN Population Fund and It surveyed fourteen thousand people across fourteen different countries about their fertility intentions. The final report was called The Real Fertility Crisis,
and it was a very very long read. So I guess I'll just give you a too long didn't read, which is to say that the fertility rate is declining not because people don't want to have children, but rather that they are prevented from making the decision to have children because of external factors. So let me just really clearly simplify that the UN isn't saying that there is a fertility crisis because young people don't want to have kids.
What they're saying is hundreds of millions of people aren't having the number of children they want because the conditions just aren't right for them to be able to do that. And before I go any further, Billy, I do just want to highlight that, of course, there are factors, including infertility, that can prevent people very clearly from starting families, and
that's really really significant. But for the sake of this discussion, the UN is broadly looking at the fertility rate and it's trying to understand if it's because people want less children or because they feel like they have to have less children, and essentially the report finds the latter, it's that they feel like they have to have less children. The UN Population Fund director said, it's often assumed or
implied that fertility rates are the results of free choice. Fortunately, that is not the whole picture.
That is so interesting and relatable.
Yeah, I think it is, and I mean I feel like people anecdotally probably know this to be the case. But this is the first kind of report that has told us, or at least has the data to support the fact that it's not that. Broadly, across the board, young people are saying no, we're not interested in having children.
And it was really interesting. The report compiled a bunch of headlines from across the globe that said like young feminist women no longer want children, or they've gone a different path than all these headlines, and it was like, no, this isn't actually the issue that when you ask people is what's coming back. It's that there are these conditions that are not allowing them to realize what it is they might actually want.
Wow.
Yeah, I have so many more questions, but just quickly, here is a message from our spots up Zara, you mentioned that there were some other reasons why women and couples are choosing to not have more children.
What are those other reasons.
We'll go first through the economic reasons, because those make up kind of the first three main reasons, the first being that thirty nine percent of respondents said that financial limitation had affected or would affect their ability to achieve their desired family size. Twenty one percent said that it was about job insecurity, nineteen percent said it was about housing. So clearly that economic context that people find themselves in
is playing a really, really big role. Another interesting stat from the report, and it's certainly something I feel like comes up in a lot of conversations I'm a part of or I'm listening to, is that one in five people said fears about the future, including things like climate change, wars, and pandemics, would lead them or has led them to
having fewer children than desired. Interestingly, only twelve percent of people cited infertility or difficulty conceiving for not having the number of children that they wanted, and I was quite surprised by that number, to be honest, it was much lower than I thought it would be. And of course, this is just one report. This hasn't spoken to every woman everywhere, but I just thought that that was interesting.
Yeah, often when I think about infertility, I think that in the past ten years or so, we have come leaps and bounds when it comes to having really open discussions about the issues surrounding infertility and how it can feel to be a woman going through that.
Yeah.
But I guess maybe it's not the case that more women are experiencing infertility, but it's the case that more women are talking about it.
Yeah. And what the report actually highlighted was that one of the big areas of concern is the inaccessibility of these fertility services or the assistance that they can provide. That while there are many in the world that can access them, for so many they are still inaccessible and that's one of the things that they think need to change for more people to have the family or the size of the family that they want.
Okay, so we know there's a declining fertility rate. We know that's a problem, and we know why it's happening. Did the un have any ideas about how to solve this issue?
Well, the report was basically saying that attempts that governments are making around the world, things like a baby bonus or an incentive to have a baby isn't actually getting to the root cause of the issue, and that they don't believe that that's actually going to move the dial at all. I want to focus in on one example of these sorts of incentives that we've actually spoken about on this podcast before, but it's a local version, so I think it's quite interesting, and that was the idea
put forward by Matt Canavan. He's a National Senator. His recommendation was to give couples and one hundred thousand dollars loan for their first home when they have their first child, and then if they have three children that the loan would be wiped And while shockingly the UN didn't specifically address Man Canavan, I don't think his own party has
addressed that proposal. However, broadly, the UN did talk about this this movement of you know, we've seen it in Hungary, we've seen it in other countries, of offering specific incentives, especially to women to have more children. What it was saying was investing in structural changes is the only thing
that is going to shift the dial. And when I say structural changes, we're talking about things like paid parental leave, the accessibility of child's care, addressing housing issues, and ensuring access to reproductive health services. They're saying, if you offer those bonuses, that's not going to do anything. Do all of these things and maybe then we'll see the fertility rate rise again in the opposite way that it's been going for decades.
So they're saying, you can't fix this long term issue with short term solutions exactly.
And again I feel like, you know, even if I look at our comment section anytime we report on these sorts of bonuses or incentives, like everyone in our comment section is saying the same thing. That know, this wouldn't be enough to actually shift the dial. But I think having the un come out and have surveyed so many people across the world and to have come to this conclusion, it'll be interesting to see if any governments pick up
on it. You know, of course, here in Australia there have been a lot of pieces of legislation when it comes to paper rental leave and childcare, but perhaps not this like suite of reforms aimed at raising the fertility rate. It can be a bit of a hot topic and people feel very strongly when they hear, especially male politicians talking about it, so definitely an interesting one to see if governments take up this kind of call to action.
Zara, thank you for taking us through that.
It was one hundred and sixty page report, so we very much appreciate you reading every single word and then summarizing it for us here. And thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Daily os. We'll be back again this afternoon with your evening headlines, but until then, have a great day.
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda bunge Lung Chalcotin woman from Gadigal Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.