This is the Bureau of Health Information of Australia’s most populous state, New South
Wales. Nearly a third of all Australians live there. If you scroll down a bit,
you’ll see their Data Portal, which is what we’ll be looking at in this video. In the data portal,
you need to select a topic. We’ll be selecting ‘Admitted patients’,
and then select an area of interest. We’ll be selecting ‘Healthcare Quarterly results’. Then
select the most recent time period, January to March 2023. The reporting level will be
‘NSW’. And then select the measure which will be ‘Babies born’. The breakdown or
results that we’re interested in is ‘Overall trends’. Finally, click the Apply button.
There were 15,868 babies born in this quarter, but if you scroll down a bit,
this is actually a 9.2% decrease as compared to the same quarter last
year. But this isn’t just a recent trend. It’s been going on for quite some time as
shown in the graph below. Noting that I’ve selected ‘All years’. Apparently,
they’ve only been keeping these records since 2010, or that’s all they’ve uploaded.
The graph shows us that births have remained fairly consistent
over the last 12 years, but since about June 2021,
there’s been a significant dip. Less babies are being born than history would indicate.
It should be noted that the NSW population has been growing over this time period (this
is the latest data I could find), which includes both babies born and population
increases due to immigration. So actually, we should expect the net number of births
to go up as the population increases, but it isn’t… It’s doing the opposite.
So what’s going on? What’s happened over the
last year-and-a-half or so that warrants such a dramatic decline?
Dr Liz Allen, a demographer at the Australian National University,
has been on the news of late talking about this. She stated: “Climate change has been
cited by young people in Australia, and other similar countries, as a major concern and
barrier to having children. The fear of uncertainty owing to growing weather and
climate extremes means young people are calling it quits on children citing ethical concerns.”
I don’t mean to disagree with the good doctor, but that’s a very hard thing to prove. It
would require years of research and interviews with ladies of child-bearing age to find out:
1. Did they ultimately have a baby, and 2. If they didn’t have a baby, why not. As I said, you’d have
to do this over many years to prove that the participants did not actually have a baby. You
can’t just interview a whole bunch of 20-year-olds at university, some of which might say, “Nah,
I’m not going to have a baby because of climate change”, but then 10 years later, they end up
having a baby anyway. The point is, this climate change assertion is pure speculation on her part.
But the main reason I disagree with the good doctor, is that the concept of climate change
has been around a lot longer than the last couple of years! I mean, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth
was released way back in 2006. Shouldn’t we have noticed a notable decline since at least then,
I mean, if people were truly willing to forgo children because of concerns over the climate?
To be fair to Dr Allen, she also mentioned some other reasons,
specifically: Cost of living pressures; Housing affordability; Insecure employment; and Gender
inequality. The first three I can somewhat agree with, but gender inequality? I mean,
wasn’t gender inequality a lot worse 50 years ago than it is now? How is that only in the last
couple of years that it’s started to affect the birth rate? Actually, I would argue that
women are more equal than they ever have been and THAT is putting downward pressure on birth rates.
As more and more ladies enter the work force and focus on careers, they have less and less
time to raise families. Perhaps the good doctor should change that last one to “Gender equality”.
Anyway, that’s Dr Allen’s full list why women are having less babies in the last year-and-a-half or
so. Sometimes I think that she was just blurting out any old talking points. I mean, it guarantees
her a few quotes in the local newspaper I suppose. I’m surprised she didn’t add institutional racism
to the list. It makes about as much sense as some of the others. Look, I accept I might
be wrong. I might be misinterpreting her words. Not to mention I don’t have a PhD in demography.
So what do you think? Do you agree with the good doctor’s assessment?
Is it climate change that is driving the birth rate downwards? Or is there
some other reason? And why has it only started in the last 18 to 24 months?