New Zealand’s falling birth rate has become a growing concern, with experts offering differing perspectives on its causes while agreeing the trend will have significant long-term implications for the country’s economy and society.
The fertility rate has remained below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman since the late 1970s. After briefly recovering to around replacement level, it began a sustained decline in 2012, falling from just over 2.06 births per woman to around 1.53 today.
Demographers have attributed the trend to a combination of rising living costs, delayed parenthood and changing social patterns.
Economist Eric Crampton, of the New Zealand Initiative, said “birth rates have fallen worldwide. People are forming couples and marrying later in life and choosing to have fewer children. Costs facing families are one potential issue affecting these decisions, but is far from the only one.” According to scientist Guy Hatchard, the latest US research suggests that the majority effect in recent times is actually coming from the use of social media. “Teen pregnancies are way down because teens have far fewer encounters with the opposite sex in private spaces, they do these online and therefore can’t get pregnant by accident”.
To tackle the falling birth rate, NZ First proposes $5,000 annual bonuses for a child’s first three years (if at least one parent is a NZ citizen), or $45,000 for three children.
Crampton said the policy would likely have a real but small effect on fertility rates and should be seen as assistance for families with the cost of raising children.
“There may be better alternatives. Continued work to ease housing costs by reducing regulatory and land use planning barriers to building could help considerably… I suspect that the same amount of money put toward easing constraints on building, and providing councils with stronger incentives to welcome housing growth, would be more effective”.
Reducing the cost of childcare and making it easier to set up new childcare centres would reduce barriers further, he noted.
Hatchard said that attempts like those proposed by NZ First have had “minimal impact,” according to overseas data, which suggests that the reasons for dropping rates are not primarily economic.
“The elephants in the corner of the room are health effects of Covid vaccines, cell phones, microplastics, etc. IVF now accounts for 3 to 9% of births but this is also due to people starting families much later”.
Read more about NZ First’s policy at ODT and The Post. Catch up with RCR’s previous coverage of falling birth rates by watching these interviews with Prof Michael Cameron, Dr Eric Crampton, Dr Guy Hatchard, Naomi Wolf and Jennifer Margulis. Check out the most up to date figures from Stats NZ.
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Image credit: Ana Curcan
