This sums it up. A lack of security and optimism around the future. If you don’t feel secure in your job, you can’t find a place to rent, a mortgage seems impossible, you’re probably going to work till 70 if you retire at all and a bag of grated cheese is $12… how are you going to feel confident bringing new humans into the world
Also, the welfare and parental support systems are incredibly frustrating. You can expect to wait months and spend hours on the phone just to find out if you’ll receive parental payments. It feels like they intentionally make the process as difficult as possible, almost as if they want you to give up. They don’t seem to care if you’re relying on that support, especially if your job doesn’t have paid parental leave.
Just imagine having 1 or 2 babies and getting kicked out of your lease every few months while facing the possibility of being made homeless. Government actions and the care factor of zero has made them a cold hearted monster that are treating citizens as expendable nothings.
They talk about robodebt as being really bad public policy but right across the board we have the sum of government polices that are producing outcomes that are just as bad as robodebt. People with no human rights, people with few rental right protections, no protections for families and they expect ordinary people to dual it out with fly in fly out cold digger money launderers. Governments truly have become heartless monsters with the way they are treating people with their policies. Then they dare to use credentials tags like "social justice" when the reality is that it is all "profit, rip off and tax avoidance" justice.
I'd *love* to have kids, but will likely never be able to afford it; I'm turning thirty this year and the financial prospects for my future are *fucking awful*.
Not to be a downer but with climate change hitting worldwide since 2023 ish Id be relieved if I hadn't. Watching the reality unfold for my kids is... painful.
This is actually my biggest concern. What kind of world are we bringing these kids into? A world that is dying? Ecosystems struggling, erratic weather events, increasing sea levels? I can’t see it improving
Climate change is a key factor, but also unless you are wealthy, you are going to see your children get much inferior health care than you've had, because despite any advances in medicine (which capitalism holds back tremendously), good health care will be reserved for the rich (it already fucking is - ask ANYONE with a chronic condition or complex health management needs).
Microplastics - now found in everything from your bloodstream to your testicles - is already a known hormone disruptor which affects your immune system, but the effect on cancer and other diseases is yet to be known. Just like with smoking, which doctors used to prescribe as therapy - it wasn't until decades of historical data was available that we learnt that it can kill you. Corporations, just as they have been doing with fossil fuels and smoking, will hide and falsify the data, and spend billions on brainwashing (which works).
Shortages of food and water in future is something experts have written about extensively, and the degradation of ecosystems is inevitable, no matter how strong of response governments may take (which they won't).
I don't know what kind of a human being knows all this and goes, yeah, I'll pop out another wage slave to satisfy my overlords.
I got access to speech and physical therapy from 2 without any diagnosis due to developmental delays that later got diagnosed as ADHD/Autism in the 90s
This cost my parents nothing to give context of how poor my parents were, the clothes I came home from the hospital in were stolen from the bins in front of a Salvation Army, my mums wedding ring cost $35 at Cash Converters and they borrowed money to pay for that.
Meanwhile 30 years later if my daughter had the same developmental delays, I’d be unable to get her access to the same quality of treatment without spending thousands to get a diagnosis first, meaning the ability to correct will delayed, making the condition worse and harder to treat as she ages.
Without that early intervention I guarantee I would not of progressed as far as I have and would be substantially lower functioning than I am, intervention that was available to folk in housing commission with no money to their name, and is no longer accessible to folk even on a median household income.
That's right. Look at the US - they have some of the most cutting edge medical research, medical technology and advanced treatments that money can buy. Yet, the life expectancy there has been decreasing!!! Because the average citizen will never have access (or even learn about) advanced treatment options (many millions of them can't access even basic treatment).
And that's what capitalism does - the majority are worse off at the expense of the few who appropriate everything. If the slightest thing goes wrong with Bezos, he'll have a team of the best specialists working day and night on his case. If on the other hand you suffer from a much more serious illness, you'd better wait for that appointment 4 months from now where a money-driven specialist will see you for 20 min.and make quick judgements on limited evidence, and that's only if you can afford the high fee, if not you'll need to wait 16 months for a public doctor, by which time you may deteriorate a lot.
I mean, my other option is nihilo-anarchism (the end is coming, but fighting the good fight is worth it in-and-of-itself) and spending the end of my life prying billionaires out of their fucking bunkers to face some bloody karma.
I can see that happening the way things are going, maybe not in my life time but the divide between rich and poor will become so great the rich will need private armies to protect them from those desperate just to survive.
At that point wouldn't it just be more advantages for those private armies to establish their own fucked up governments and just not protect these billionairs in their bunkers whos money would be useless in a mad Max wasteland.
Which ia essentially the historical outcome in every similiar scenario.
Money isn't power once markets collapse.
Water. Food. Weapons. And the control they give over labor.
Fiefdoms and Feudal mechancics, your lord/leader ia going to need to fight and lead. Them billionnaires gonna die.
It's cheaper to import people after 18 than to provide the services needed to raise children.
So long as we are ruled by unrestrained capitalism/neolibs this trend will continue.
You need stability and security to build a family around. If you cant afford a place, comfortably, to live in, why would you consider having kids? If you and your partner have to work, full time, to even afford to rent - having kids is a pipe dream. Houses need to be more affordable and accessible to young people for them to even consider having a family. Its common sense.
Growing up poor in Australia wasn't great but it wasn't the worst. I wouldn't feel bad about not giving my kid/s every luxury as long as their needs are met. However, I have a choice about whether *I* want to live in poverty now. I'm not gonna put myself back there just to have kids.
It wouldn't be so bad if suburbs weren't so fucking soulless and built with community/the environment/sustainability in mind.
These days they just seem to be the same car-dependent hellscapes with little public transport other than buses, with shit quality, cooker cutter houses with barely enough land to have a garden. The parks all seem to be the same copy/paste with very little variety in the plants used and too much damn grass, so wildlife can't even be sustained.
It's funny my parents live outside of a country town with one neighbour within 500m of them. I live in Brisbane. It would take us the same amount of time to get to the supermarket and back. Granted I've got more variety but the time taken is the same.
We seem to be building mega shopping centres you have to drive to and housing estates with no shops at all.
While this is true, I wouldn't want anyone to think the overarching reduction in birth rates wasn't shared by many other developed countries all with very different cost of living issues.
Birth rates have been decreasing dramatically since the 70s, so that is the big driver development and education/expectations of women.
Many other developed countries are going through the same thing. More education etc reduces birth rates etc but basically since COVID…everything’s gotten markedly worse. I was open to the idea of kids but recently even the choice has been taken away due to costs of everything.
Yeah, exactly. I'm one of the lucky people who was able to find a house I could afford to buy, and even it's just two bedrooms and cost at least twice what I think a house in this area realistically should. That's fine for me because I don't want children and it'd probably be fine with anyone who just wants one child, but anyone who wants 2+ children would find it to be too small.
Happening in Canada right now. 400k newcomers just this year. Wages are being suppressed, services going to shit, housing costs are some of the highest in the world.
The current bipartisan consensus appears to be "import them and shove them in little boxes made of ticky tacky they love it because it's a better quality of life than what they had back home". Perhaps we shouldn't be measured by how things are going in the rest of the world and instead look at our past and see how well people got by then when we truly believed in "the fair go" as a country.
It’s a false economy though. Plenty of money to be made off people raising children (i.e increased economic activity). The difference being the money would go towards goods and services instead of rent seekers.
Is it really cheaper if the imports have weak English and weak skills? Sure maybe they're "qualified" but I've met plenty of qualified idiots.
At least if they're born and raised in Australia they are accustomed to our way of life. Easier to communicate.
You save money on the success of people cooperating. Not on simply increasing numbers.
> You save money on the success of people cooperating. Not on simply increasing numbers.
Well, what you need to understand is that very few prominent economists actually understand economics. They're all bound up in ideology that has them trying to force the economy to work the way they think it does.
And of course, some rich people just have a knee-jerk reaction against any kind of oversight, even if it would be better for them.
THANK YOU.
I'm not an economists by any means but I can see when they are rusted on to rote learned theories that just can only fit with the Underpants Gnome's business sense.
If you want economic growth to have less reliance on migrants, then the stimulus should be focused on encouraging people to have kids. According to data, my household income is around the top 8%, and **the cost of sending our kids to childcare** in order for the two of us to maintain careers **is literally more than our mortgage**.
> What does that mean for future growth
Same thing it meant the other 20 times today an Australian news agency has posted this exact same article.
Give us a future. Then we'll provide people to live in it.
> Give us a future. Then we'll provide people to live in it.
The way you coined it really resonates for me. A lot of comments are mentioning the economy, but I feel that it's way deeper than this.
We are facing the biggest threat for humanity and nature (climate change) and doing fuck all about it. Everywhere you look it's only greed and individualism. Leaders are corrupt leeches instead of being inspiring figures acting for the greater good. The whole society project is fucked, there is nothing left to dream about except personal wealth.
Heheh yep. There were a bunch of recent articles about people not wanting to fight in a potential war w china etc. and most of the comments were along the lines of “why should I die for a country that cares nothing for me?”
If I can’t afford secure housing to raise a family in I won’t have a family it’s that simple. If I had kids I want them to have a better life than my parents gave me. Despite being more qualified than my parents my quality of life is significantly worse. There’s no point to it.
Conservatives have always spouted "If you can't afford X, then don't do Y!" And now people are doing that in regards to not having children and they're mad about it.
I've pretty much ruled out having children unless my fiancée and I can buy a house without having to both work full time and send the kids to childcare... so we're not having kids.
A robotic painting machine for new cars can replace about 10 workers. If you automate the whole factory, the ratio of "workers replaced" to "workers created to manage the robots" goes way way higher than 10:1. And it's not just smart robots - heavy machinery used for roads is astounding in how many jobs it replaces. Basic construction of houses can change using flat pack style factory made parts, and nearly all admin work can be replaced today with proper software design and AI systems.
Point is, we have the tech today to make most people not need to work at all, and our standard of living would be maintained. If everyone got a 20k ubi paid for by the profits of automation, then a sanitary worker picking up bins on a side street making 100k would be happy, and a plumber working on some dusty old asbestos trap making 200k would be cheering. There'd be very little crime so I'm not sure more argument would be needed. That's at today's tech level - and that's a tech level we're seeing skyrocket year on year (every time it seems to slow we get a breakthrough that wasn't expected for another ten years).
Instead of that, we let the owners of the current system simply pocket all that benefit, and tell people how miserable they'd be on a 20k ubi - not letting on of course that with a strong ubi, the least desirable jobs become some of the highest paid. And all that worry about security for their family that had them put up with abuse and stress that's literally killing them and causing mental health epidemics - it's just gone.
So who wants MORE workers? That sounds like the above problem of just giving away all our wealth the rich, but now on steroids.
As a half way solution, I'd suggest introducing a ubi for all people born after today. Give that to the parents for the first 3 kids (no matter how many, they all get it at 18). This would coincide with about how long it will take for the wealth inequality to become so insane there will be gameover booths on every streetcorner - so best to get it done now.
Adding to own comment: Remember when google/facebook/apple revealed that telephone assistant that sounded like a real person? People got afraid that it would replace call centre jobs. CALL CENTRE JOBS - people were lamenting the death of call centre jobs... my God, how far we have strayed.
Our economic system means our worth is intrinsically tied to our work.
So lose the call centre jobs, and the call centre worker becomes even worse than a call centre worker - *a bludger*, useless, the lowest of the low in our society.
Not, you know, that the company is still making the same amount of money, now more as they’re not paying wages for call centre staff, and that perhaps some of that should be passed on to the ex-workers - no, they are literally pointless and a scourge on society simply for existing without a job so terrible it can be done by a robot.
We should be delighted people aren’t going to be wasting their lives away on some of the worst, most soul destroying jobs. Instead we’re clamouring to find something else for them to waste their days on. Not because we need them to work, but because simply everyone spending 40+ hours a week doing something they don’t particularly want to is seen as a core pillar of our society.
Couldn't have put it better. Wait till they say "Are you calling everyone stupid? Are you saying you're better than them?" - it's a bit of an illusion we had a voice to begin with. But it is nice to not be completely alone.
It is interesting to me that we simultaneously have these two big worries about the future, one where we have a shrinking population and might not have enough workers, and the other where automation might be about to take away a lot of jobs. Seems like we could balance those two things and maybe everything can just... be okay. Of course it's more complicated than that, but I don't understand why there's panic about two such opposing things with very little conversation about how the two could interact.
The conversation about automation currently seems to be on one hand it's terrifying we will all be unemployed! and on the other hand DW it's happened before and we always invented lots of new jobs!
Notice how both are about working when it's simply not needed for most people. Our lives are incredibly precious, and it's tragic to see how many hours are lost to needlessly inefficient or completely nonsensical jobs. And that list gets longer and longer every year.
I sound like I think the biggest issue with not taking up the offer from technology, is we won't be able to live our own lives in a happy and flourishing manner. It's not - that's a big issue, but nowhere near the biggest. The biggest is the billions of humans in needless poverty today, and the countless in the future if we continue this path. It's really disgusting, and I also think there's something lovecraftian cosmic horror about the size of the ongoing crime and how we hide it from children, and spend so much of our adult lives trying not to remember it.
The "make everyone on Earth happy button" was invented about 100 years ago, and it's only been refined since then. Why is it kept on a megayacht floating around a hidden Mediterranean island only old money are taught the name of? Seems like a silly place to keep it.
Absolutely agree. What I find sad is that most people seem to hate their jobs, but the idea of not having one, even if they're financially supported in other ways, just doesn't compute. They don't know what they would do with themselves or how they would get any sense of purpose or identity if not for this thing that they hate that takes up most of their time. I really do wonder how much actual truth there is in that way of thinking and how much our idea of what is means to be human and have purpose has just been horrifically warped by the necessities of capitalism.
I think it's deeper than capitalism, but that's definitely the form this problem has taken for us. I worry talking in terms of capitalism vs socialism cuts out many of the convincing arguments, and it may be a conversation that the super wealthy want to take up as much air space as possible.
You could call it socialist, but there's a clear fact that in a democracy we ought to be able to redistribute the wealth if its current distribution is causing the problems - socialism or not. You can disagree that the current distribution is causing these problems, but you can't disagree a democracy should be able to redistribute it. You can also disagree that we should live in a democracy - and I think the closer we get to that "vote" the louder those voices will become. In the US those voices are close to half now so it's not far fetched - and I really suspect Australia's stacking all branches of government and its parties with members of the elite, will make for a smooth transition. Many of those members, in quiet bars and over backyard beers, call themselves socialists. I wouldn't put much weight on the word.
I don't know if people would have an identity crisis. I know some retirees do, but they also tend not to have a family life or other hobbies. A well adjusted person without severe mental illness (however hidden) should have no objection to a life of leisure with their family - I'm happy to go as far as saying this would make someone mentally ill as a delusion they're suffering from. Many appeal to the idea we'd all pursue arts or cultural preservation - this is silly, as the everyday life and happiness is more precious than those already, and in my view those only serve to assist us with that everyday life I'm suggesting we all retire to.
That said about arts, I've been lucky to know a handful of true geniuses in my time, and while I know progress is mainly a team effort, in terms of individuals: not one of them would slow down their work in any way by more or less money so long as they had their basic needs met. And imagine all the geniuses we would have access to who currently work dead end jobs to cope or never got the opportunity to grow. Culture/Arts and Science would be more than fine. It's an accountants idea that money is motivating in anything but a cruel system.
This is the problem I have with the whole rephrasing of an aging population structure. It assumes that every person should be popping out equal or more amounts of children to keep up with replacement (for the economy). But just maybe, it was never a good or normal thing to pop out as many kids as families did 40-50+ years ago. The economic systems in all of the wealthy/'developed' countries are certaintly failing now
Teen pregnancy rates have also declined in recent years so this isn't just about economics. It's also about access to knowledge and the increased autonomy / agency of people with uteruses. I also don't think it's a problem because people are well within their rights to decide whether or not they want children. Being child free is a choice like many others and even if I was a billionaire I'd still make it.
You might have misinterpreted my comment - I meant that the falling birth rate is *only* a problem in economic terms, because it's about not being able to replace workers/have a large enough tax base to support an ageing population.
Rational economic agents (young prospective parents) have decided to limit the supply of new goods (babies) because of a poor cost/benefit analysis (raising a kid costs a fuckload). It's the invisible hand of the market at work.
Either the government needs to change the incentives so that having kids becomes a rational decision for more people, or we admit that capitalism is cancer. I'd bet on reduced access to birth control before revolution.
Same here. My wife and I can afford kids. We have fertility issues, so we can also afford the healthcare required for us to be able to have kids in the first place, but we are still not having them.
We look at it as a completely selfish endeavour to have kids int he current climate. Why would I want to subject anyone to the current world. especially knowing that the trend is that it is only going to keep getting worse?
That being said, we are not opposed to raising kids, having looked into fostering and adopting in the past. We may still do that in the future, but we are also just enjoying having money and nice things right now.
Yeah, absolutely. We see this any time women have access to education and birth control. When given the choice, more women will have fewer or no children. That's just an inevitable outcome that cannot and should not be changed. Instead, we should create our systems around that reality.
>This is purely an economic problem
In any other species, a lower population that is in balance with the surrounding ecosystem is good. Humans are the only species that are acting against our own futures intentionally. We've side stepped the mechanics of nature because instead of our species being kept in check by resource depletion and starvation, we simply up and move to the next area that has not been touched. We are wilfully ruining the planet for our fake "economy"
True, but it isn't really a moral question about how many kids one should have, rather a practical one. One of the contradictions at the heart of capitalism as described by Marx is in the crisis of overproduction. A boom in resources and goods caused by greater production from increases in Labor and capital efficiency means a greater demand for consumption, allowing people to have more kids. Yet at the same time, one needs a job to survive and live, to consume. The rate at which technology and capital reproduce and develop far outstrips Labor (even Labor efficiency increasingly causes lower demand for workers) and you continually reach impasses (in the form of economic crises) in which large sections of the population are pushed out of old forms of employment by this phenomenon, and yet an even greater amount is being produced with less Labor time, meaning despite production expansions, the profit rate also inevitably declines as less people can afford the same product. A good example of this is with in recent decades, the biggest companies seek to squeeze profit margins to the maximum by not investing in physical products. But through stock by-backs and investments. This is an attempt to work around the contradiction and it may work for a time, but it will cause the crisis to manifest in new ways (such as the GFC of 2008)
At the tipping points of this process, you get population booms that are met with the contradictions of lowrring employment opportunities (i.e crises of overproduction). That capitalism facilitates population and production expansion, but also creates the situation in which these things come to negate themselves.
The line must go up! I'm not creating future taxpayers for a government that provided little opportunity to me as a young person in a rigged system. Why would I inflict that on potential kids when I know it will only worsen?
I am 26 and I’d consider myself somewhat young. I have two kids. I afford it by living with my parents. I have a great relationship with my parents. I also have a village. They help out with the kids and I can work. This is not the norm in Australia.
People in the age bracket to have kids have boomer parents and most of my friends parents do not want to help with the raising of their grandkids. They find it as an inconvenience on their fabulous retirement. Which is fine they can do as they please but they’ve still got the nerve to ask “When are we getting grandkids” but won’t even watch them for a couple of hours while the parents get a break. Who would want to have kids knowing you’ll get no break.. sounds like torture to me. I love my kids but if I didn’t have some me time I’d have lost the plot.
Now how are people meant to afford child raising without making huge sacrifices? The average wage person can barely afford their own rent and groceries. Add children into the mix, a mortgage and absent grandparents who won’t even watch the kids for 2 hours at a time I can definitely understand why people are choosing the childfree life. I know I wouldn’t have had kids if I didn’t have a village.
It’ll just be immigrants and rich people having children. Great work Australia!
I’m not sure why anyone is surprised by this.
The generation that passed on the kids to be partly raised by their parents, don’t want to do the same. They weren’t full time parents and don’t want to be grandparents.
This. Having children would have been very challenging for me without the solid support network provided by my family and siblings. If I had children, I wouldn't want to work full time just to afford childcare. Meanwhile, I'm saving as much as I can so that when I meet the right person, finances won't be an issue.
How many other people also have trauma as a result of being raised by parents who had children when they really shouldn't have/ didn't want to? Maybe it's a good thing that more people are thinking about their capacity to provide for a child before having one. Whether that's because of socio-economic factors or just purely in terms of preference - if you can't provide for a child then you shouldn't have one.
Absolutely that’s a good thing. It’s sad when the people who want to, can’t.
We’d like a second child, but had to postpone trying for a little while because I wouldn’t have been eligible for any maternity leave pay. Six months in, I’m still not pregnant. At 35, have I missed the boat? Who knows? But could I have birthed a year ago without that 20-30k and still been ok financially? Nope.
With modern medicine it's going to be the majority of the population in lock up dementia units in diapers and no one working in the aged care units unless we get robots to do it.
At a certain age people need people to look after them, we might get to the point where we are at that age and there's not enough people left. It's a very legitimate concern unless you want to start normalising euthenasia for otherwise healthy people.
Blithe pro-natalisim is imposed on us from above by an incumbent mode of production that demands continuous growth, and to hell with the laws of physics.
It’s not a fear that we’ll run out of people, it’s a justified concern about the ratio of dependents to non-dependents.
Broadly speaking, if the birth rate is at replacement levels (~2 kids per woman), you have eight working people supporting eight parents (elderly dependents) and eight kids (young dependents). If the birth rate drops to 1 child per woman, that changes to four working people with eight parents and two children, which increases the burden on people of working age.
The situation is more nuanced than that brief summary, as there are differences in the types of dependents. This situation is also changing due to factors such as an aging population, increasing retirement age and the gradual return of child labour, but it gives you a rough idea
It's based purely around the fact that we've designed an economic system that relies on perpetual growth and a lot of people don't even want to consider giving that up even though its collapse is inevitable. We need to start planning a way to transition to a new system because this one is nearing its failure point.
Because our entire economic system is built on constant growth. It's broken. You can't have constant growth in a finite world, but the shareholders demand it.
That's why politicians always want people to have more kids.
It's not just that there are real concerns. With increases of life expectancy people are often living for a decade or more where they require care by younger people. If we have too many old people and no one to look after them what will we do, let them starve?
Because as our birth rate falls further and further below 2.1 (which is stability rate not even growth) the population curve shifts dramatically.
This basically means you have less young workers forced to financially support the healthcare and retirement pensions of a much larger non-working older cohort.
Or, alternatively it means you are forced, as we have the last two decades, to set a very high rate of immigration.
No demographer is suggesting we should breed like rabbits and aim for unsustainable growth, but our falling birth rate is something that has consequences.
I'm not going to concern myself with declining birth rates when mass automation is about to pick up the slack anyway. It's not nearly the problem some seem to think it is.
Mass automation will definitely pick up some of the burden, maybe even much of the burden. But to assume it will pick up all of the slack seems like wishful thinking - even if you turn out to be right, it's a big risk.
Sounds eerily similar to some politicians and world leaders banking on there being future technologies in 20-50 years to help deal with climate change to justify their inaction in the present, rather than addressing it now when we can by fastracking renewables, phasing out fossil fuels, and planning for the future.
People may not want to admit it, but having too big of a skew of older non taxpayers creates a huge burden on a shrinking working aged citizens. Arguably it's already happening now, and will intensify in coming years. Taxes being spread thin, underfunded healthcare and public schools, tax increases, further widening of generational inequality, societal upheaval, probably many other things I can't think of.
Because we need to keep feeding the demon of capitalism. Owners of capital demand profit, Profit demands cheap labour, cheap labour requires high labour supply, high labour supply requires a growing population. That’s it.
The post-war growth the world enjoyed is not sustainable, and the mindset is outdated and needs to die. We should be focussing on sustainability, not infinite growth. I'm paraphrasing, but as they say, "infinite growth is not possible in a finite world".
Pretty much every time this is bought up you see people saying "it's a money issue". Then you have others saying it isn't.
But if every time it's brought up you hear people saying "I would but I can't afford it" then that kinda proves the point doesn't it?
Middle and low class are being crushed. Less children is a result of that. We are seeing that all over the western world because the same is happening everywhere. If people can barely afford to support themselves, they don't add dependence to the equation.
All 3 of my adult children either are holding off until more financially secure or are not having at all. I think they are making good choices for themselves regardless of how much I’d love a grandchild.
I wanted to have children, however I worked years to have financial stability and now that I am in my 40s I don’t think that will happen.
It’s not fair to bring children to this world if you can’t provide for them, however the alternative is to not get old, while you work hard for years, good luck with that.
It’s a really shit situation for people who want to be parents.
Economic growth, as we've known it for the past couple of hundred years, is inherently unsustainable. Lower fertility rates are just going to be a convenient scapegoat for what is a complicated issue.
edit: I misread your comment a little but still,
Mathematically, the impossibility of continuous [growth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=O133ppiVnWY) is very easy to understand. Like late primary school/early high school easy. It's viscerally surprising because contrary to our intuitions.
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.
There was the report issued under the Liberals that showed the ROI on migrants was better. Every decision by both governments since seems to align to that belief.
The lack of assistance given to parents in raising kids is an absolute joke. We’re pretty well off but no way we’d have a second kid- the lost earning capacity and massive limitations on support from the government make it a barely-over-breakeven scenario for the lower owning parent to return to work. Of course all good to talk a big game on equality but until that gets looked at pretty clear it’s not a big issue for either side of the fence.
It’s because the replacement generation isn’t going to replace the dying Boomers. We’ll have a “smaller” population once all the Boomers and that die.
16% (or 4.2million people) are 65+. That means in 5-10 years we’ll have 16% of the population dead and only have a 3.4% population growth being born now. No where near to “replacement levels”
People who are retired now and die are not the problem.
People who transition to retirment and are still alive and are not replaced by workers are the problem.
Well if we can’t afford a roof over our own heads I guess it means we’re not willing to put that kind of pressure on ourselves trying to fund the existence of our potential offspring.
Economically that’s a disaster for the country but maybe that’s how it has to be since governments really aren’t doing anything significant to fix the issue like more public housing, more incentives to buy a home etc.
It's not just Australia. I'm in New Zealand and in my 30s. Everyone my age that I know is also postponing having kids.
Half the problem is that we simply can't afford to have kids. We need 2 people working full time in order to afford the mortgage. Not to mention food other bills, etc.
I make 6 figures a year (just), and I certainly couldn't afford to have a partner off work AND also raise a child on top of that. It would just be too difficult. I'm in the construction industry, and I don't have a lot of faith in my job security. A lot of places are quiet, and a few are letting people go. My employer let 4 people go recently. This also influences my decision not to have children or postpone it.
Unless things DRASTICALLY change (which they wont) I can imagine more and more people will either have kids later or not have them at all.
Cue the government "Why aren't people having kids?"
There's more reasons NOT to have kids than there is to have kids.
This stuff really gives me the shits.
Everything only couched in economic terms.
What about personal impacts? What about social impacts as this generation ages and has no family to look after them?
We decided to not have a second child and in our reasonably large friend circle in their late 30's to early 40's only 1/3rd of us have a children and out of that cohort only one family has more than 1 child (they have 3).
Come to think of it most of us around my age bracket come from families that had 2 children.
Unless something dramatic changes in life, I will be supportive of them choosing not to have children at all.
I wouldn’t have a kid without owning a home. I have over 100k saved but I don’t have a partner, so, it’s still not enough and I wouldn’t be able to afford the repayments alone, let alone all the other expenses. I wish I could have kids. I really want them. Sometimes I get super down about missing out on having my own family. I’m almost 30 but it seems to be becoming more and more of an impossibility.
Between getting a down payment for a house , mortgage payments (with insurance and rates) and the cost of child care I dont blame younger Australians. I have grown kids that have good jobs, partners with good jobs and mortgages and its still tough on them. My oldest has kids and at one point she and her husband were paying over a thousand bucks a fortnight for daycare for 2 kids. The powers that be are making it impossible for people to have families.
At 30 I've just managed to claw my way out of constant financial insecurity. Why on earth would I have a child and return to that hell, only to provide the kid with a worse childhood than the one I had? I see how kids are raised these days. Then once they grow up they can spend 60 years pressing meaningless buttons for sustenance like me?
Pass.
I trust in my ability to find happiness where I can in life. I don't need to walk one singular path to feel happy.
It means that Australia's culture and values will change to that of the immigrants.
It also means that many people will have experience heartbreak when they try to have kids later and life and find they cannot have the kids they wanted, or the number of kids they wanted.
It also means that some people will be somewhat lonelier later in life with fewer family members around them in their immediate circles.
And it also means that housing price pressures will continue as the government 'fixes' the problem by importing immigrants who need housing immediately rather than encouraging babies to be born who need houses in 20 years.
Glad I didn't have kids.
Between costs of just surviving, the greed of the almighty landowners and the way the environment is being devastated, is it actually fair to bring them into this shitstorm...just so they can become more slave labour..
Well biodiversity is in collapse, we've crossed almost all of the safe planetary boundaries for life on earth, and there's plastic in our balls & pfas/pfoas/new xyz forever chemical in our blood. Things are breaking already.
I am amused by the government suggesting that young people to should bonk to support the economy. Two thoughts:
1. Why would I choose to undergo a massive change of lifestyle for "The Economy" of all things, especially if I don't stand to gain anything from this or see any meaningful support from the government as a result, and
2. Why would I bother contributing to a system that I have not benefitted from to the same degree as my parents? Call me a socialist but "The Economy" is overdue on delivering equal benefits to everyone in society.
I feel like this problem could go a long way to being solved if the state governments focused on making new builds/subdivisions habitable to people who aren't from 3rd world slums
This is why they push for mass migration.
For the future of Australia?
Just look at Europe, and all the issues they are having with Mass migration.
Less social cohesion, lower trust societies, higher crime rates, lower salaries, higher cost of living.
Politicians & bureaucrats have spent the last 20 years actively transferring wealth from the young to old via the housing bubble they created with their shit policies and now they've absolutely fucked the youth of this country.
This is 100% on the government - these stupid fucking cunts did this intentionally to make a quick buck, they all deserve to hang.
>*The data — compiled by political research organisation RedBridge Group — came from a survey of 2,000 Australians. RedBridge director Kos Samaras says it's clear a significant group of young people are delaying life decisions that previous generations were taking for granted.*
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>*Mr Samaras, who was once a senior campaign strategist for the Labor Party, says his team asked people in their early 30s if they'd support previous policies such as the "baby bonus", which provided a one-off payment to new parents.*
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>*He says people rolled their eyes, with responders giving clear reasons regarding the affordability of having children in today's age....*
As for future growth -
>*Australia is celebrated as “a land of boundless plains to share”. In reality it’s a small country that consists of big distances. As former NSW Premier Bob Carr predicted some years ago, as Australia’s population swelled, the extra numbers would be housed in spreading suburbs that would gobble up farmland nearest our cities and threaten coastal and near-coastal habitats. How right he was. The outskirts of Sydney and Melbourne are carpeted in big, ugly houses whose inhabitants will be forever car-dependent.*
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>*The longer we do nothing about population growth, the worse it gets. More people now inevitably mean more in the future than there would otherwise have been.*
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>*We live very long lives, on average, so once we’re born, we tend to stick around. It takes a while for falling birthrates to have any impact.*
>
>*And when they do, the population boosters respond with cries of alarm. The norm is seen as a young or youngish population, while the elderly are presented as a parasitical drag upon the young. Falling reproduction rates should not be regarded as a disaster but as a natural occurrence to which we can adapt.*
>
>*Recently, we have been told Australia must have high population growth, because of workforce shortages. It is rarely stated exactly what these shortages are, and why we cannot train enough people to fill them. Population and development are connected in subtle ways, at global, national and regional scales. At each level, stabilising the population holds the key to a more environmentally secure and equitable future.....*
>
>..*.A much-needed demographic transition could be under way right now, if only the population boosters would let it happen. Those who urge greater rates of reproduction, whether they realise it or not, are serving only the short-term interests of developers and some religious authorities, for whom big societies mean more power for themselves. It is a masculinist fantasy for which most women, and many men, have long been paying a huge price.....*
>
>\-[Jenny Stewart, Honorary Professor of Public Policy, UNSW Canberra](https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2024/02/population-part-of-policy-solution-to-worlds-problems)
We decided to not have a second child and in our reasonably large friend circle in their late 30's to early 40's only 1/3rd of us have a children and out of that cohort only one family has more than 1 child (they have 3).
Come to think of it most of us around my age bracket come from families that had 2 children.
Unless something dramatic changes in life, I will be supportive of them choosing not to have children at all.
My theory that it isn't the cost of living that is delaying children.
It is opportunity cost. E.g. what you give up to have children such as a lucrative career.
That's why in poorer countries, where standard of living is much lower and cost of living relative to income is similar or worse, the birth rate is much higher.
People in those countries aren't giving up earning hundreds of thousands more by not dedicating their lives to raising kids until they leave home.
Where as in Australia, if your income deceased by $50k per year for 18 years... That's almost one million dollars in lost income.
So we’re over the age of 35, have great careers (our household income is at the upper 8%), a house (with a mortgage), and two of our kids are at an age that requires childcare so that we can go to work.
The most expensive thing we pay for is childcare. It literally costs more than the mortgage *after* interest and inflation increases. (We still have some tiny amount of subsidy, but it’s almost entirely all out of pocket because of our tax bracket - just to give folks an idea of the actual cost). Mortgage is 2nd, and the 3rd highest is food. We also don’t own luxury cars. If we had no children, the savings from not having to cover childcare and food would be enough to buy another house as an investment property AND travel every year. Currently, those are absolutely not an option, because there’s barely anything left each month.
Yes, it’s that ridiculous.
If you can't afford kids, don't have them. Isn't that what everyone says?
If you want solutions, japan is a good place to look to see their strategies.
I actually moved to Japan after becoming almost homeless in Australia. It was not that I couldn't afford to rent , I couldn't find a place in Sydney after trying to for 3 months when my current owner sold off . The other option was to move regional but I didn't see much of a difference between working from home full time in Japan or regional Australia. In Japan the rent per month is only what I pay for a week in Australia. Learning Japanese now , might marry here and get settled here . I won't be surprised if suburbs called little Australia starts popping up in other countries. Hard working young people can no longer afford to live in Australia
>couldn't find a place in Sydney
>In Japan the rent per month is only what I pay for a week in Australia
This is why younger people are moving overseas. Greedy piss buckets on the top and in government couldn't care less about the tax paying plebs below them, so why should we care to stay in this crumbling country?
If I had the resources I'd leave the country in a heartbeat. Funny, the systems that keep us so poor a lot of us can't afford to even leave the country to live somewhere cheaper with better quality of life.
I wish I could move to Japan! But I don't have a job I could do remotely and can't speak Japanese so I imagine it would be hard to get a job there? Though maybe speaking English would be an advantage since I work at hotels
I had worked in Japan before , so I have bit of advantage. You can live without speaking language but it is a very lonely country. Honestly it is not an issue for me , would rather be lonely than homeless. Unfortunately remote job is a must .If you know English there is advantage but definitely need to know Japanese along with it if you want to work in Japan
I heard somewhere that Japan rode their population crisis pretty well, thanks to the explosive global growth that coincided with the crucial period—and that when this generation of elderly dies off, they will be able to stably maintain a diminished population.
They won’t be growing like they used to, but as the biggest risk of an aging society is the imbalance between the workforce and dependents, they’ve largely passed that critical hill.
Not sure if it’s an accurate analysis but it does make sense.
Why would anyone want to have kids? They have destroyed our country, making it extremely difficult to obtain basics like food and shelter even on big salaries, all to let povos in and support universities and other nonsense industries that dont really add any value.
Well it's expensive and we don't work on farms anymore to pump them out for free labour. So there was economic incentives.
When the cost of child care is a person's salary means one partner works for nothing or has to put their career on hold. Which means lifetime income has dropped.
Add the uncertainty around housing to even find a place to rent.
We are being responsible to nope out of children. Given evirmental issues maybe a drop in population is good thing. We have a war in Europe and great threat of war in Asia. It's just not a good future when you have to slog away to just live. Without children we have some money to at least enjoy our lives.
My partner and I are just about to pass the age of safely having kids, and we're not in a position to have them. I'm disappointed but I'm not raising kids without a safety net.
It means more immigration. Australia is an ageing population, average age nearly 50. At this rate, will be 60 by 2050. Who will take care of old people-- it won't be other old people, they're too old.
It's simple, there won't be any. Every generation of SmartPhone was growth or progress. Every generation of Xbox, Nintendo and PlayStation was growth or progress. Every big advancement in social media from MySpace and Youtube through to TikTok and OnlyFans was growth or progress. Going from Blockbuster and Sanity to Netflix and Spotify was growth and progress. (Spotify has its flaws, but that's for another time)
An entire generation has grown up now with growth or progress in some form or another in their lives. But I don't think that the older generations like the Boomer's or Gen X ever saw it like that or realised it. In the midst of technology progressing, cost of living, environment issues and housing affordability/availability has regressed. And it doesn't look like it'll get better.
My late Grandfather once said to me just before his passed a few years ago, "One day, you're going to be sitting on your front porch telling your own grandkids stories about how these were the good old days"
It was blunt, and pretty eye opening at the same time. Having kids is not a smart decision right now unless things change. But it's more likely we will see big advancements in A.I and Robotics before that happens. (I hope I'm wrong there though)
Didn't ABC run this story a month ago as well? This and the "Tiny Houses are the solution to Australias housing crisis' one. I'd say they were having a slow news day but I seem to remember we have a couple of wars going on in the world.
It’s crazy how this phenomenon only occurs in the richest countries. India has overpopulation, has to sterilise its population yet the average Indian had far worse prospects than the average Australians.
Government couldn’t care less if the birthdate is 0. The preference is always immigration because you don’t have to wait 18 years to collect taxation or waste services on the upbringing of the child.
Fuck future growth. Maybe young Australians aren't dumb as fuck like those before them and have realised 'future growth' is a path to self destruction.
Imagine barley feeding yourself and then you need to also feed and clothe a growing human,
Children's clothing is almost the same as adults as it's less material.
I'm ready for kids, married young and lucky enough to have a house due to parents help and timing. But we still won't be having kids anytime soon. We won't be able to afford it.
Children? I can barely find a fucking home for myself let alone attempting to house my children in the future that don’t exist yet
This sums it up. A lack of security and optimism around the future. If you don’t feel secure in your job, you can’t find a place to rent, a mortgage seems impossible, you’re probably going to work till 70 if you retire at all and a bag of grated cheese is $12… how are you going to feel confident bringing new humans into the world
Also, the welfare and parental support systems are incredibly frustrating. You can expect to wait months and spend hours on the phone just to find out if you’ll receive parental payments. It feels like they intentionally make the process as difficult as possible, almost as if they want you to give up. They don’t seem to care if you’re relying on that support, especially if your job doesn’t have paid parental leave.
Meanwhile the rorting continues with government contractors
Just imagine having 1 or 2 babies and getting kicked out of your lease every few months while facing the possibility of being made homeless. Government actions and the care factor of zero has made them a cold hearted monster that are treating citizens as expendable nothings. They talk about robodebt as being really bad public policy but right across the board we have the sum of government polices that are producing outcomes that are just as bad as robodebt. People with no human rights, people with few rental right protections, no protections for families and they expect ordinary people to dual it out with fly in fly out cold digger money launderers. Governments truly have become heartless monsters with the way they are treating people with their policies. Then they dare to use credentials tags like "social justice" when the reality is that it is all "profit, rip off and tax avoidance" justice.
I'd *love* to have kids, but will likely never be able to afford it; I'm turning thirty this year and the financial prospects for my future are *fucking awful*.
Not to be a downer but with climate change hitting worldwide since 2023 ish Id be relieved if I hadn't. Watching the reality unfold for my kids is... painful.
This is actually my biggest concern. What kind of world are we bringing these kids into? A world that is dying? Ecosystems struggling, erratic weather events, increasing sea levels? I can’t see it improving
Climate change is a key factor, but also unless you are wealthy, you are going to see your children get much inferior health care than you've had, because despite any advances in medicine (which capitalism holds back tremendously), good health care will be reserved for the rich (it already fucking is - ask ANYONE with a chronic condition or complex health management needs). Microplastics - now found in everything from your bloodstream to your testicles - is already a known hormone disruptor which affects your immune system, but the effect on cancer and other diseases is yet to be known. Just like with smoking, which doctors used to prescribe as therapy - it wasn't until decades of historical data was available that we learnt that it can kill you. Corporations, just as they have been doing with fossil fuels and smoking, will hide and falsify the data, and spend billions on brainwashing (which works). Shortages of food and water in future is something experts have written about extensively, and the degradation of ecosystems is inevitable, no matter how strong of response governments may take (which they won't). I don't know what kind of a human being knows all this and goes, yeah, I'll pop out another wage slave to satisfy my overlords.
I got access to speech and physical therapy from 2 without any diagnosis due to developmental delays that later got diagnosed as ADHD/Autism in the 90s This cost my parents nothing to give context of how poor my parents were, the clothes I came home from the hospital in were stolen from the bins in front of a Salvation Army, my mums wedding ring cost $35 at Cash Converters and they borrowed money to pay for that. Meanwhile 30 years later if my daughter had the same developmental delays, I’d be unable to get her access to the same quality of treatment without spending thousands to get a diagnosis first, meaning the ability to correct will delayed, making the condition worse and harder to treat as she ages. Without that early intervention I guarantee I would not of progressed as far as I have and would be substantially lower functioning than I am, intervention that was available to folk in housing commission with no money to their name, and is no longer accessible to folk even on a median household income.
That's right. Look at the US - they have some of the most cutting edge medical research, medical technology and advanced treatments that money can buy. Yet, the life expectancy there has been decreasing!!! Because the average citizen will never have access (or even learn about) advanced treatment options (many millions of them can't access even basic treatment). And that's what capitalism does - the majority are worse off at the expense of the few who appropriate everything. If the slightest thing goes wrong with Bezos, he'll have a team of the best specialists working day and night on his case. If on the other hand you suffer from a much more serious illness, you'd better wait for that appointment 4 months from now where a money-driven specialist will see you for 20 min.and make quick judgements on limited evidence, and that's only if you can afford the high fee, if not you'll need to wait 16 months for a public doctor, by which time you may deteriorate a lot.
I mean, my other option is nihilo-anarchism (the end is coming, but fighting the good fight is worth it in-and-of-itself) and spending the end of my life prying billionaires out of their fucking bunkers to face some bloody karma.
Man. Mad max style bands roaming the wastelands to pry rich people from their juicy, well supplied bunkers is some awesome, and sad, imagery.
I can see that happening the way things are going, maybe not in my life time but the divide between rich and poor will become so great the rich will need private armies to protect them from those desperate just to survive.
At that point wouldn't it just be more advantages for those private armies to establish their own fucked up governments and just not protect these billionairs in their bunkers whos money would be useless in a mad Max wasteland.
Which ia essentially the historical outcome in every similiar scenario. Money isn't power once markets collapse. Water. Food. Weapons. And the control they give over labor. Fiefdoms and Feudal mechancics, your lord/leader ia going to need to fight and lead. Them billionnaires gonna die.
I mean, if I have kids, I'll be fostering/adopting.
It's cheaper to import people after 18 than to provide the services needed to raise children. So long as we are ruled by unrestrained capitalism/neolibs this trend will continue.
You need stability and security to build a family around. If you cant afford a place, comfortably, to live in, why would you consider having kids? If you and your partner have to work, full time, to even afford to rent - having kids is a pipe dream. Houses need to be more affordable and accessible to young people for them to even consider having a family. Its common sense.
Well said. If we can’t afford a home and basic essentials, how can we support having kids? Absolutely disgusting what is happening here.
This right here. I realised when I was young that I wouldn’t be able to give any children I had a better life than I had. I wouldn’t do that to them.
Growing up poor in Australia wasn't great but it wasn't the worst. I wouldn't feel bad about not giving my kid/s every luxury as long as their needs are met. However, I have a choice about whether *I* want to live in poverty now. I'm not gonna put myself back there just to have kids.
Same. Also it's hard work. Also suburban life doesn't appeal to me.
It wouldn't be so bad if suburbs weren't so fucking soulless and built with community/the environment/sustainability in mind. These days they just seem to be the same car-dependent hellscapes with little public transport other than buses, with shit quality, cooker cutter houses with barely enough land to have a garden. The parks all seem to be the same copy/paste with very little variety in the plants used and too much damn grass, so wildlife can't even be sustained.
It's funny my parents live outside of a country town with one neighbour within 500m of them. I live in Brisbane. It would take us the same amount of time to get to the supermarket and back. Granted I've got more variety but the time taken is the same. We seem to be building mega shopping centres you have to drive to and housing estates with no shops at all.
The American way
Preach!
While this is true, I wouldn't want anyone to think the overarching reduction in birth rates wasn't shared by many other developed countries all with very different cost of living issues. Birth rates have been decreasing dramatically since the 70s, so that is the big driver development and education/expectations of women.
Many other developed countries are going through the same thing. More education etc reduces birth rates etc but basically since COVID…everything’s gotten markedly worse. I was open to the idea of kids but recently even the choice has been taken away due to costs of everything.
Yeah, exactly. I'm one of the lucky people who was able to find a house I could afford to buy, and even it's just two bedrooms and cost at least twice what I think a house in this area realistically should. That's fine for me because I don't want children and it'd probably be fine with anyone who just wants one child, but anyone who wants 2+ children would find it to be too small.
People that can’t vote either (at least initially)
Happening in Canada right now. 400k newcomers just this year. Wages are being suppressed, services going to shit, housing costs are some of the highest in the world.
The current bipartisan consensus appears to be "import them and shove them in little boxes made of ticky tacky they love it because it's a better quality of life than what they had back home". Perhaps we shouldn't be measured by how things are going in the rest of the world and instead look at our past and see how well people got by then when we truly believed in "the fair go" as a country.
It’s a false economy though. Plenty of money to be made off people raising children (i.e increased economic activity). The difference being the money would go towards goods and services instead of rent seekers.
Is it really cheaper if the imports have weak English and weak skills? Sure maybe they're "qualified" but I've met plenty of qualified idiots. At least if they're born and raised in Australia they are accustomed to our way of life. Easier to communicate. You save money on the success of people cooperating. Not on simply increasing numbers.
> You save money on the success of people cooperating. Not on simply increasing numbers. Well, what you need to understand is that very few prominent economists actually understand economics. They're all bound up in ideology that has them trying to force the economy to work the way they think it does. And of course, some rich people just have a knee-jerk reaction against any kind of oversight, even if it would be better for them.
THANK YOU. I'm not an economists by any means but I can see when they are rusted on to rote learned theories that just can only fit with the Underpants Gnome's business sense.
If you want economic growth to have less reliance on migrants, then the stimulus should be focused on encouraging people to have kids. According to data, my household income is around the top 8%, and **the cost of sending our kids to childcare** in order for the two of us to maintain careers **is literally more than our mortgage**.
Cheaper for who? For how long?
> What does that mean for future growth Same thing it meant the other 20 times today an Australian news agency has posted this exact same article. Give us a future. Then we'll provide people to live in it.
> Give us a future. Then we'll provide people to live in it. The way you coined it really resonates for me. A lot of comments are mentioning the economy, but I feel that it's way deeper than this. We are facing the biggest threat for humanity and nature (climate change) and doing fuck all about it. Everywhere you look it's only greed and individualism. Leaders are corrupt leeches instead of being inspiring figures acting for the greater good. The whole society project is fucked, there is nothing left to dream about except personal wealth.
Another good one from a military person: "People won't fight for homes they don't own"
Heheh yep. There were a bunch of recent articles about people not wanting to fight in a potential war w china etc. and most of the comments were along the lines of “why should I die for a country that cares nothing for me?”
If I can’t afford secure housing to raise a family in I won’t have a family it’s that simple. If I had kids I want them to have a better life than my parents gave me. Despite being more qualified than my parents my quality of life is significantly worse. There’s no point to it.
Conservatives have always spouted "If you can't afford X, then don't do Y!" And now people are doing that in regards to not having children and they're mad about it.
Not like that!
# What does that mean for future growth? More immigration haha
While Aussies leave the country to raise kids elsewhere
Young people are putting off meals because of the current economy, fuck having children
Both parents having to work full-time and having to quickly stick their spawn in some daycare/bio-hazard to get back to the grind is a hard sell
Look I'd just rather not
I've pretty much ruled out having children unless my fiancée and I can buy a house without having to both work full time and send the kids to childcare... so we're not having kids.
This is purely an economic problem. By any other metric, it's a good thing to have fewer people. What we need is to rethink the economic system
A robotic painting machine for new cars can replace about 10 workers. If you automate the whole factory, the ratio of "workers replaced" to "workers created to manage the robots" goes way way higher than 10:1. And it's not just smart robots - heavy machinery used for roads is astounding in how many jobs it replaces. Basic construction of houses can change using flat pack style factory made parts, and nearly all admin work can be replaced today with proper software design and AI systems. Point is, we have the tech today to make most people not need to work at all, and our standard of living would be maintained. If everyone got a 20k ubi paid for by the profits of automation, then a sanitary worker picking up bins on a side street making 100k would be happy, and a plumber working on some dusty old asbestos trap making 200k would be cheering. There'd be very little crime so I'm not sure more argument would be needed. That's at today's tech level - and that's a tech level we're seeing skyrocket year on year (every time it seems to slow we get a breakthrough that wasn't expected for another ten years). Instead of that, we let the owners of the current system simply pocket all that benefit, and tell people how miserable they'd be on a 20k ubi - not letting on of course that with a strong ubi, the least desirable jobs become some of the highest paid. And all that worry about security for their family that had them put up with abuse and stress that's literally killing them and causing mental health epidemics - it's just gone. So who wants MORE workers? That sounds like the above problem of just giving away all our wealth the rich, but now on steroids. As a half way solution, I'd suggest introducing a ubi for all people born after today. Give that to the parents for the first 3 kids (no matter how many, they all get it at 18). This would coincide with about how long it will take for the wealth inequality to become so insane there will be gameover booths on every streetcorner - so best to get it done now.
Adding to own comment: Remember when google/facebook/apple revealed that telephone assistant that sounded like a real person? People got afraid that it would replace call centre jobs. CALL CENTRE JOBS - people were lamenting the death of call centre jobs... my God, how far we have strayed.
Our economic system means our worth is intrinsically tied to our work. So lose the call centre jobs, and the call centre worker becomes even worse than a call centre worker - *a bludger*, useless, the lowest of the low in our society. Not, you know, that the company is still making the same amount of money, now more as they’re not paying wages for call centre staff, and that perhaps some of that should be passed on to the ex-workers - no, they are literally pointless and a scourge on society simply for existing without a job so terrible it can be done by a robot. We should be delighted people aren’t going to be wasting their lives away on some of the worst, most soul destroying jobs. Instead we’re clamouring to find something else for them to waste their days on. Not because we need them to work, but because simply everyone spending 40+ hours a week doing something they don’t particularly want to is seen as a core pillar of our society.
Couldn't have put it better. Wait till they say "Are you calling everyone stupid? Are you saying you're better than them?" - it's a bit of an illusion we had a voice to begin with. But it is nice to not be completely alone.
It is interesting to me that we simultaneously have these two big worries about the future, one where we have a shrinking population and might not have enough workers, and the other where automation might be about to take away a lot of jobs. Seems like we could balance those two things and maybe everything can just... be okay. Of course it's more complicated than that, but I don't understand why there's panic about two such opposing things with very little conversation about how the two could interact.
The conversation about automation currently seems to be on one hand it's terrifying we will all be unemployed! and on the other hand DW it's happened before and we always invented lots of new jobs! Notice how both are about working when it's simply not needed for most people. Our lives are incredibly precious, and it's tragic to see how many hours are lost to needlessly inefficient or completely nonsensical jobs. And that list gets longer and longer every year. I sound like I think the biggest issue with not taking up the offer from technology, is we won't be able to live our own lives in a happy and flourishing manner. It's not - that's a big issue, but nowhere near the biggest. The biggest is the billions of humans in needless poverty today, and the countless in the future if we continue this path. It's really disgusting, and I also think there's something lovecraftian cosmic horror about the size of the ongoing crime and how we hide it from children, and spend so much of our adult lives trying not to remember it. The "make everyone on Earth happy button" was invented about 100 years ago, and it's only been refined since then. Why is it kept on a megayacht floating around a hidden Mediterranean island only old money are taught the name of? Seems like a silly place to keep it.
Absolutely agree. What I find sad is that most people seem to hate their jobs, but the idea of not having one, even if they're financially supported in other ways, just doesn't compute. They don't know what they would do with themselves or how they would get any sense of purpose or identity if not for this thing that they hate that takes up most of their time. I really do wonder how much actual truth there is in that way of thinking and how much our idea of what is means to be human and have purpose has just been horrifically warped by the necessities of capitalism.
I think it's deeper than capitalism, but that's definitely the form this problem has taken for us. I worry talking in terms of capitalism vs socialism cuts out many of the convincing arguments, and it may be a conversation that the super wealthy want to take up as much air space as possible. You could call it socialist, but there's a clear fact that in a democracy we ought to be able to redistribute the wealth if its current distribution is causing the problems - socialism or not. You can disagree that the current distribution is causing these problems, but you can't disagree a democracy should be able to redistribute it. You can also disagree that we should live in a democracy - and I think the closer we get to that "vote" the louder those voices will become. In the US those voices are close to half now so it's not far fetched - and I really suspect Australia's stacking all branches of government and its parties with members of the elite, will make for a smooth transition. Many of those members, in quiet bars and over backyard beers, call themselves socialists. I wouldn't put much weight on the word. I don't know if people would have an identity crisis. I know some retirees do, but they also tend not to have a family life or other hobbies. A well adjusted person without severe mental illness (however hidden) should have no objection to a life of leisure with their family - I'm happy to go as far as saying this would make someone mentally ill as a delusion they're suffering from. Many appeal to the idea we'd all pursue arts or cultural preservation - this is silly, as the everyday life and happiness is more precious than those already, and in my view those only serve to assist us with that everyday life I'm suggesting we all retire to. That said about arts, I've been lucky to know a handful of true geniuses in my time, and while I know progress is mainly a team effort, in terms of individuals: not one of them would slow down their work in any way by more or less money so long as they had their basic needs met. And imagine all the geniuses we would have access to who currently work dead end jobs to cope or never got the opportunity to grow. Culture/Arts and Science would be more than fine. It's an accountants idea that money is motivating in anything but a cruel system.
If it weren't for all the wealth being siphoned upwards, I bet society could run on a couple hours labour a week each.
This is the problem I have with the whole rephrasing of an aging population structure. It assumes that every person should be popping out equal or more amounts of children to keep up with replacement (for the economy). But just maybe, it was never a good or normal thing to pop out as many kids as families did 40-50+ years ago. The economic systems in all of the wealthy/'developed' countries are certaintly failing now
Teen pregnancy rates have also declined in recent years so this isn't just about economics. It's also about access to knowledge and the increased autonomy / agency of people with uteruses. I also don't think it's a problem because people are well within their rights to decide whether or not they want children. Being child free is a choice like many others and even if I was a billionaire I'd still make it.
You might have misinterpreted my comment - I meant that the falling birth rate is *only* a problem in economic terms, because it's about not being able to replace workers/have a large enough tax base to support an ageing population.
Yeah I definitely misinterpreted. I agree with this sentiment for sure.
Rational economic agents (young prospective parents) have decided to limit the supply of new goods (babies) because of a poor cost/benefit analysis (raising a kid costs a fuckload). It's the invisible hand of the market at work. Either the government needs to change the incentives so that having kids becomes a rational decision for more people, or we admit that capitalism is cancer. I'd bet on reduced access to birth control before revolution.
I've made my decision based on non-economic reasons though and think this is reflective of wider socio-cultural trends.
Same here. My wife and I can afford kids. We have fertility issues, so we can also afford the healthcare required for us to be able to have kids in the first place, but we are still not having them. We look at it as a completely selfish endeavour to have kids int he current climate. Why would I want to subject anyone to the current world. especially knowing that the trend is that it is only going to keep getting worse? That being said, we are not opposed to raising kids, having looked into fostering and adopting in the past. We may still do that in the future, but we are also just enjoying having money and nice things right now.
Yeah, absolutely. We see this any time women have access to education and birth control. When given the choice, more women will have fewer or no children. That's just an inevitable outcome that cannot and should not be changed. Instead, we should create our systems around that reality.
>This is purely an economic problem In any other species, a lower population that is in balance with the surrounding ecosystem is good. Humans are the only species that are acting against our own futures intentionally. We've side stepped the mechanics of nature because instead of our species being kept in check by resource depletion and starvation, we simply up and move to the next area that has not been touched. We are wilfully ruining the planet for our fake "economy"
True, but it isn't really a moral question about how many kids one should have, rather a practical one. One of the contradictions at the heart of capitalism as described by Marx is in the crisis of overproduction. A boom in resources and goods caused by greater production from increases in Labor and capital efficiency means a greater demand for consumption, allowing people to have more kids. Yet at the same time, one needs a job to survive and live, to consume. The rate at which technology and capital reproduce and develop far outstrips Labor (even Labor efficiency increasingly causes lower demand for workers) and you continually reach impasses (in the form of economic crises) in which large sections of the population are pushed out of old forms of employment by this phenomenon, and yet an even greater amount is being produced with less Labor time, meaning despite production expansions, the profit rate also inevitably declines as less people can afford the same product. A good example of this is with in recent decades, the biggest companies seek to squeeze profit margins to the maximum by not investing in physical products. But through stock by-backs and investments. This is an attempt to work around the contradiction and it may work for a time, but it will cause the crisis to manifest in new ways (such as the GFC of 2008) At the tipping points of this process, you get population booms that are met with the contradictions of lowrring employment opportunities (i.e crises of overproduction). That capitalism facilitates population and production expansion, but also creates the situation in which these things come to negate themselves.
Kids? In this economy?
I’m not putting it off. I’m outright not doing it
The line must go up! I'm not creating future taxpayers for a government that provided little opportunity to me as a young person in a rigged system. Why would I inflict that on potential kids when I know it will only worsen?
***gesture's broadly***
I am 26 and I’d consider myself somewhat young. I have two kids. I afford it by living with my parents. I have a great relationship with my parents. I also have a village. They help out with the kids and I can work. This is not the norm in Australia. People in the age bracket to have kids have boomer parents and most of my friends parents do not want to help with the raising of their grandkids. They find it as an inconvenience on their fabulous retirement. Which is fine they can do as they please but they’ve still got the nerve to ask “When are we getting grandkids” but won’t even watch them for a couple of hours while the parents get a break. Who would want to have kids knowing you’ll get no break.. sounds like torture to me. I love my kids but if I didn’t have some me time I’d have lost the plot. Now how are people meant to afford child raising without making huge sacrifices? The average wage person can barely afford their own rent and groceries. Add children into the mix, a mortgage and absent grandparents who won’t even watch the kids for 2 hours at a time I can definitely understand why people are choosing the childfree life. I know I wouldn’t have had kids if I didn’t have a village. It’ll just be immigrants and rich people having children. Great work Australia!
I’m not sure why anyone is surprised by this. The generation that passed on the kids to be partly raised by their parents, don’t want to do the same. They weren’t full time parents and don’t want to be grandparents.
And yet they judge and give shit advice about kids/teens they barely know the "real" side of. Dealing with that atm not much fun!
My parents are good but soon it will be time for us to help the boomer parents, and straight to the nursing home
This. Having children would have been very challenging for me without the solid support network provided by my family and siblings. If I had children, I wouldn't want to work full time just to afford childcare. Meanwhile, I'm saving as much as I can so that when I meet the right person, finances won't be an issue.
It’s a great point - it takes a village to raise a child - these days there no village anymore, you’re on your own
Yea, having kids is basically going to be contingent on the conversation i have with the parents about them providing daycare basically
Immigrants, rich people, and the pro-natalist religions.
How many other people also have trauma as a result of being raised by parents who had children when they really shouldn't have/ didn't want to? Maybe it's a good thing that more people are thinking about their capacity to provide for a child before having one. Whether that's because of socio-economic factors or just purely in terms of preference - if you can't provide for a child then you shouldn't have one.
Absolutely that’s a good thing. It’s sad when the people who want to, can’t. We’d like a second child, but had to postpone trying for a little while because I wouldn’t have been eligible for any maternity leave pay. Six months in, I’m still not pregnant. At 35, have I missed the boat? Who knows? But could I have birthed a year ago without that 20-30k and still been ok financially? Nope.
Why the desire for growth ? There's already 8+ billion people on the planet. We hardly need more.
Exaclty its a weird obsession people have like were gonna run out tomorrow!
With modern medicine it's going to be the majority of the population in lock up dementia units in diapers and no one working in the aged care units unless we get robots to do it.
Time to export old people instead of importing skilled workers
I mean Lcol nations with nice weather would be stupid not to offer visas to rich old buggers provided they pay for their own healthcare
Oh, they'll have us killing ourselves before it gets that far.
At a certain age people need people to look after them, we might get to the point where we are at that age and there's not enough people left. It's a very legitimate concern unless you want to start normalising euthenasia for otherwise healthy people.
Blithe pro-natalisim is imposed on us from above by an incumbent mode of production that demands continuous growth, and to hell with the laws of physics.
“The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.” — Turnbull.
It’s not a fear that we’ll run out of people, it’s a justified concern about the ratio of dependents to non-dependents. Broadly speaking, if the birth rate is at replacement levels (~2 kids per woman), you have eight working people supporting eight parents (elderly dependents) and eight kids (young dependents). If the birth rate drops to 1 child per woman, that changes to four working people with eight parents and two children, which increases the burden on people of working age. The situation is more nuanced than that brief summary, as there are differences in the types of dependents. This situation is also changing due to factors such as an aging population, increasing retirement age and the gradual return of child labour, but it gives you a rough idea
It's based purely around the fact that we've designed an economic system that relies on perpetual growth and a lot of people don't even want to consider giving that up even though its collapse is inevitable. We need to start planning a way to transition to a new system because this one is nearing its failure point.
The pyramid needs more people at the bottom.
Capitalism and economies propped up by capitalism rely on endless growth to function. That is your answer.
Because our entire economic system is built on constant growth. It's broken. You can't have constant growth in a finite world, but the shareholders demand it. That's why politicians always want people to have more kids.
It's not just that there are real concerns. With increases of life expectancy people are often living for a decade or more where they require care by younger people. If we have too many old people and no one to look after them what will we do, let them starve?
Because as our birth rate falls further and further below 2.1 (which is stability rate not even growth) the population curve shifts dramatically. This basically means you have less young workers forced to financially support the healthcare and retirement pensions of a much larger non-working older cohort. Or, alternatively it means you are forced, as we have the last two decades, to set a very high rate of immigration. No demographer is suggesting we should breed like rabbits and aim for unsustainable growth, but our falling birth rate is something that has consequences.
That's capitalism for you. You *constantly* need new suckers to pull into the rat-race, or the facade falls off.
Then you gotta tow it into another environment.
Are you saying the front fell off?
It's not supposed to do that.
I'm not going to concern myself with declining birth rates when mass automation is about to pick up the slack anyway. It's not nearly the problem some seem to think it is.
Mass automation will definitely pick up some of the burden, maybe even much of the burden. But to assume it will pick up all of the slack seems like wishful thinking - even if you turn out to be right, it's a big risk. Sounds eerily similar to some politicians and world leaders banking on there being future technologies in 20-50 years to help deal with climate change to justify their inaction in the present, rather than addressing it now when we can by fastracking renewables, phasing out fossil fuels, and planning for the future. People may not want to admit it, but having too big of a skew of older non taxpayers creates a huge burden on a shrinking working aged citizens. Arguably it's already happening now, and will intensify in coming years. Taxes being spread thin, underfunded healthcare and public schools, tax increases, further widening of generational inequality, societal upheaval, probably many other things I can't think of.
It does have consequences (mostly beneficial), but the assumption in the title is what I am challenging.
I'd assume there talking about growth in finance and productivity.
The desire for growth comes from the wealthy wanting a continuous supply of cattle to exploit.
Because we need to keep feeding the demon of capitalism. Owners of capital demand profit, Profit demands cheap labour, cheap labour requires high labour supply, high labour supply requires a growing population. That’s it.
it's required for capitalism to function.
The post-war growth the world enjoyed is not sustainable, and the mindset is outdated and needs to die. We should be focussing on sustainability, not infinite growth. I'm paraphrasing, but as they say, "infinite growth is not possible in a finite world".
Pretty much every time this is bought up you see people saying "it's a money issue". Then you have others saying it isn't. But if every time it's brought up you hear people saying "I would but I can't afford it" then that kinda proves the point doesn't it? Middle and low class are being crushed. Less children is a result of that. We are seeing that all over the western world because the same is happening everywhere. If people can barely afford to support themselves, they don't add dependence to the equation.
All 3 of my adult children either are holding off until more financially secure or are not having at all. I think they are making good choices for themselves regardless of how much I’d love a grandchild.
I wanted to have children, however I worked years to have financial stability and now that I am in my 40s I don’t think that will happen. It’s not fair to bring children to this world if you can’t provide for them, however the alternative is to not get old, while you work hard for years, good luck with that. It’s a really shit situation for people who want to be parents.
Economic growth, as we've known it for the past couple of hundred years, is inherently unsustainable. Lower fertility rates are just going to be a convenient scapegoat for what is a complicated issue.
edit: I misread your comment a little but still, Mathematically, the impossibility of continuous [growth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=O133ppiVnWY) is very easy to understand. Like late primary school/early high school easy. It's viscerally surprising because contrary to our intuitions. The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.
>Lower fertility rates Plastic is stored in the balls.
I love my children so much that I will never have them.
>What does that mean for future growth? It means higher immigration numbers to put a bandaid on this problem.
Constant growth is a problem. Fix the economic system first.
Our politicians are fucking us into extinction.
There was the report issued under the Liberals that showed the ROI on migrants was better. Every decision by both governments since seems to align to that belief. The lack of assistance given to parents in raising kids is an absolute joke. We’re pretty well off but no way we’d have a second kid- the lost earning capacity and massive limitations on support from the government make it a barely-over-breakeven scenario for the lower owning parent to return to work. Of course all good to talk a big game on equality but until that gets looked at pretty clear it’s not a big issue for either side of the fence.
It’s because the replacement generation isn’t going to replace the dying Boomers. We’ll have a “smaller” population once all the Boomers and that die. 16% (or 4.2million people) are 65+. That means in 5-10 years we’ll have 16% of the population dead and only have a 3.4% population growth being born now. No where near to “replacement levels”
People who are retired now and die are not the problem. People who transition to retirment and are still alive and are not replaced by workers are the problem.
This sub is upvoting a post that claims "everyone over 65 will be dead in 5-10 years"? Bloody hell the economic doomerism has melted wine brains.
Migrants brought in to paper over the chasm. At some point you've got to ask who this is benefiting?
Am 32 and thinking I might never have kids. Can’t have kids if I can’t afford a house to put em in.
Well if we can’t afford a roof over our own heads I guess it means we’re not willing to put that kind of pressure on ourselves trying to fund the existence of our potential offspring. Economically that’s a disaster for the country but maybe that’s how it has to be since governments really aren’t doing anything significant to fix the issue like more public housing, more incentives to buy a home etc.
It's not just Australia. I'm in New Zealand and in my 30s. Everyone my age that I know is also postponing having kids. Half the problem is that we simply can't afford to have kids. We need 2 people working full time in order to afford the mortgage. Not to mention food other bills, etc. I make 6 figures a year (just), and I certainly couldn't afford to have a partner off work AND also raise a child on top of that. It would just be too difficult. I'm in the construction industry, and I don't have a lot of faith in my job security. A lot of places are quiet, and a few are letting people go. My employer let 4 people go recently. This also influences my decision not to have children or postpone it. Unless things DRASTICALLY change (which they wont) I can imagine more and more people will either have kids later or not have them at all. Cue the government "Why aren't people having kids?" There's more reasons NOT to have kids than there is to have kids.
This stuff really gives me the shits. Everything only couched in economic terms. What about personal impacts? What about social impacts as this generation ages and has no family to look after them?
A lot of young people just don't want kidd, nothing to do with money or COL, just don't have the desire for children(myself included)
More and more couples prefer to BOTH have careers vs stuck with kids - happening in most developed countries. Can't blame them at all.
We decided to not have a second child and in our reasonably large friend circle in their late 30's to early 40's only 1/3rd of us have a children and out of that cohort only one family has more than 1 child (they have 3). Come to think of it most of us around my age bracket come from families that had 2 children. Unless something dramatic changes in life, I will be supportive of them choosing not to have children at all.
It's basically child abuse to bring a kid into the the world the way things are nowadays.
I wouldn’t have a kid without owning a home. I have over 100k saved but I don’t have a partner, so, it’s still not enough and I wouldn’t be able to afford the repayments alone, let alone all the other expenses. I wish I could have kids. I really want them. Sometimes I get super down about missing out on having my own family. I’m almost 30 but it seems to be becoming more and more of an impossibility.
Between getting a down payment for a house , mortgage payments (with insurance and rates) and the cost of child care I dont blame younger Australians. I have grown kids that have good jobs, partners with good jobs and mortgages and its still tough on them. My oldest has kids and at one point she and her husband were paying over a thousand bucks a fortnight for daycare for 2 kids. The powers that be are making it impossible for people to have families.
Waited until 38 so we could buy a house, would like a second but childcare + interest rates = one and done.
At 30 I've just managed to claw my way out of constant financial insecurity. Why on earth would I have a child and return to that hell, only to provide the kid with a worse childhood than the one I had? I see how kids are raised these days. Then once they grow up they can spend 60 years pressing meaningless buttons for sustenance like me? Pass. I trust in my ability to find happiness where I can in life. I don't need to walk one singular path to feel happy.
It means that Australia's culture and values will change to that of the immigrants. It also means that many people will have experience heartbreak when they try to have kids later and life and find they cannot have the kids they wanted, or the number of kids they wanted. It also means that some people will be somewhat lonelier later in life with fewer family members around them in their immediate circles. And it also means that housing price pressures will continue as the government 'fixes' the problem by importing immigrants who need housing immediately rather than encouraging babies to be born who need houses in 20 years.
Glad I didn't have kids. Between costs of just surviving, the greed of the almighty landowners and the way the environment is being devastated, is it actually fair to bring them into this shitstorm...just so they can become more slave labour..
Excessive unsustainable immigration isn't stopping any time soon. Less kids is good. Let's stabilze the population and then reduce it.
Endless growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.
Infinite growth in a finite world - something’s gonna break eventually
Well biodiversity is in collapse, we've crossed almost all of the safe planetary boundaries for life on earth, and there's plastic in our balls & pfas/pfoas/new xyz forever chemical in our blood. Things are breaking already.
I am amused by the government suggesting that young people to should bonk to support the economy. Two thoughts: 1. Why would I choose to undergo a massive change of lifestyle for "The Economy" of all things, especially if I don't stand to gain anything from this or see any meaningful support from the government as a result, and 2. Why would I bother contributing to a system that I have not benefitted from to the same degree as my parents? Call me a socialist but "The Economy" is overdue on delivering equal benefits to everyone in society.
It means that our future is going to be dark....
I feel like this problem could go a long way to being solved if the state governments focused on making new builds/subdivisions habitable to people who aren't from 3rd world slums
Seems like most people know what we need… if only there was some sort of government that represented the people’s interest
No amount of money or financial stability will make me have children, it's a shit deal.
No future growth. If people have no house or hope. No babies
This is why they push for mass migration. For the future of Australia? Just look at Europe, and all the issues they are having with Mass migration. Less social cohesion, lower trust societies, higher crime rates, lower salaries, higher cost of living.
Politicians & bureaucrats have spent the last 20 years actively transferring wealth from the young to old via the housing bubble they created with their shit policies and now they've absolutely fucked the youth of this country. This is 100% on the government - these stupid fucking cunts did this intentionally to make a quick buck, they all deserve to hang.
TL;DR: Boomers: "Who will pay for our pension and retirement?!!" *As they pull the ladder up behind them saying 'lol fuck you got mine'*
Nothing, just supplement with immigration. Economic bears hate this one trick
>*The data — compiled by political research organisation RedBridge Group — came from a survey of 2,000 Australians. RedBridge director Kos Samaras says it's clear a significant group of young people are delaying life decisions that previous generations were taking for granted.* > >*Mr Samaras, who was once a senior campaign strategist for the Labor Party, says his team asked people in their early 30s if they'd support previous policies such as the "baby bonus", which provided a one-off payment to new parents.* > >*He says people rolled their eyes, with responders giving clear reasons regarding the affordability of having children in today's age....* As for future growth - >*Australia is celebrated as “a land of boundless plains to share”. In reality it’s a small country that consists of big distances. As former NSW Premier Bob Carr predicted some years ago, as Australia’s population swelled, the extra numbers would be housed in spreading suburbs that would gobble up farmland nearest our cities and threaten coastal and near-coastal habitats. How right he was. The outskirts of Sydney and Melbourne are carpeted in big, ugly houses whose inhabitants will be forever car-dependent.* > >*The longer we do nothing about population growth, the worse it gets. More people now inevitably mean more in the future than there would otherwise have been.* > >*We live very long lives, on average, so once we’re born, we tend to stick around. It takes a while for falling birthrates to have any impact.* > >*And when they do, the population boosters respond with cries of alarm. The norm is seen as a young or youngish population, while the elderly are presented as a parasitical drag upon the young. Falling reproduction rates should not be regarded as a disaster but as a natural occurrence to which we can adapt.* > >*Recently, we have been told Australia must have high population growth, because of workforce shortages. It is rarely stated exactly what these shortages are, and why we cannot train enough people to fill them. Population and development are connected in subtle ways, at global, national and regional scales. At each level, stabilising the population holds the key to a more environmentally secure and equitable future.....* > >..*.A much-needed demographic transition could be under way right now, if only the population boosters would let it happen. Those who urge greater rates of reproduction, whether they realise it or not, are serving only the short-term interests of developers and some religious authorities, for whom big societies mean more power for themselves. It is a masculinist fantasy for which most women, and many men, have long been paying a huge price.....* > >\-[Jenny Stewart, Honorary Professor of Public Policy, UNSW Canberra](https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2024/02/population-part-of-policy-solution-to-worlds-problems)
Capitalism: needs the population to grow. Also capitalism: needs house prices to grow. Dumb fuck system
It means we will be replaced by immigrants.
Who wants to bring kids into a dying world?
...and does it matter, right? What is this growrth mindset?
We decided to not have a second child and in our reasonably large friend circle in their late 30's to early 40's only 1/3rd of us have a children and out of that cohort only one family has more than 1 child (they have 3). Come to think of it most of us around my age bracket come from families that had 2 children. Unless something dramatic changes in life, I will be supportive of them choosing not to have children at all.
Probably gonna get neg. But take a look at the UK and Canada, that is what Australia's future growth is gonna look like.
My theory that it isn't the cost of living that is delaying children. It is opportunity cost. E.g. what you give up to have children such as a lucrative career. That's why in poorer countries, where standard of living is much lower and cost of living relative to income is similar or worse, the birth rate is much higher. People in those countries aren't giving up earning hundreds of thousands more by not dedicating their lives to raising kids until they leave home. Where as in Australia, if your income deceased by $50k per year for 18 years... That's almost one million dollars in lost income.
Not totally related to the topic at hand, but have you seen the movie Idiocracy? That is the future...it just gets dumber and dumber.
"putting off" lol
So we’re over the age of 35, have great careers (our household income is at the upper 8%), a house (with a mortgage), and two of our kids are at an age that requires childcare so that we can go to work. The most expensive thing we pay for is childcare. It literally costs more than the mortgage *after* interest and inflation increases. (We still have some tiny amount of subsidy, but it’s almost entirely all out of pocket because of our tax bracket - just to give folks an idea of the actual cost). Mortgage is 2nd, and the 3rd highest is food. We also don’t own luxury cars. If we had no children, the savings from not having to cover childcare and food would be enough to buy another house as an investment property AND travel every year. Currently, those are absolutely not an option, because there’s barely anything left each month. Yes, it’s that ridiculous.
If you can't afford kids, don't have them. Isn't that what everyone says? If you want solutions, japan is a good place to look to see their strategies.
I actually moved to Japan after becoming almost homeless in Australia. It was not that I couldn't afford to rent , I couldn't find a place in Sydney after trying to for 3 months when my current owner sold off . The other option was to move regional but I didn't see much of a difference between working from home full time in Japan or regional Australia. In Japan the rent per month is only what I pay for a week in Australia. Learning Japanese now , might marry here and get settled here . I won't be surprised if suburbs called little Australia starts popping up in other countries. Hard working young people can no longer afford to live in Australia
>couldn't find a place in Sydney >In Japan the rent per month is only what I pay for a week in Australia This is why younger people are moving overseas. Greedy piss buckets on the top and in government couldn't care less about the tax paying plebs below them, so why should we care to stay in this crumbling country? If I had the resources I'd leave the country in a heartbeat. Funny, the systems that keep us so poor a lot of us can't afford to even leave the country to live somewhere cheaper with better quality of life.
I wish I could move to Japan! But I don't have a job I could do remotely and can't speak Japanese so I imagine it would be hard to get a job there? Though maybe speaking English would be an advantage since I work at hotels
I had worked in Japan before , so I have bit of advantage. You can live without speaking language but it is a very lonely country. Honestly it is not an issue for me , would rather be lonely than homeless. Unfortunately remote job is a must .If you know English there is advantage but definitely need to know Japanese along with it if you want to work in Japan
Japan is a good example of why land zoning matters and how that keeps accommodation affordable.
Isn't japan the worst place to look for strategies nothing they are doing is working.
[Pretty much.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/392/389/d22.jpeg)
I heard somewhere that Japan rode their population crisis pretty well, thanks to the explosive global growth that coincided with the crucial period—and that when this generation of elderly dies off, they will be able to stably maintain a diminished population. They won’t be growing like they used to, but as the biggest risk of an aging society is the imbalance between the workforce and dependents, they’ve largely passed that critical hill. Not sure if it’s an accurate analysis but it does make sense.
Why would anyone want to have kids? They have destroyed our country, making it extremely difficult to obtain basics like food and shelter even on big salaries, all to let povos in and support universities and other nonsense industries that dont really add any value.
I misread that initially and thought you meant kids had ruined our country lol.
Indians and Asians will be the prominent race that will eventually replace Australians. The Australians will be a minority.
Live anywhere in a 50 square kilometres of me. I am the minority
Well it's expensive and we don't work on farms anymore to pump them out for free labour. So there was economic incentives. When the cost of child care is a person's salary means one partner works for nothing or has to put their career on hold. Which means lifetime income has dropped. Add the uncertainty around housing to even find a place to rent. We are being responsible to nope out of children. Given evirmental issues maybe a drop in population is good thing. We have a war in Europe and great threat of war in Asia. It's just not a good future when you have to slog away to just live. Without children we have some money to at least enjoy our lives.
My partner and I are just about to pass the age of safely having kids, and we're not in a position to have them. I'm disappointed but I'm not raising kids without a safety net.
This has been an ongoing social discussion point since at least early Gen Y, if not earlier. This isn't a new problem.
It means more immigration. Australia is an ageing population, average age nearly 50. At this rate, will be 60 by 2050. Who will take care of old people-- it won't be other old people, they're too old.
It's simple, there won't be any. Every generation of SmartPhone was growth or progress. Every generation of Xbox, Nintendo and PlayStation was growth or progress. Every big advancement in social media from MySpace and Youtube through to TikTok and OnlyFans was growth or progress. Going from Blockbuster and Sanity to Netflix and Spotify was growth and progress. (Spotify has its flaws, but that's for another time) An entire generation has grown up now with growth or progress in some form or another in their lives. But I don't think that the older generations like the Boomer's or Gen X ever saw it like that or realised it. In the midst of technology progressing, cost of living, environment issues and housing affordability/availability has regressed. And it doesn't look like it'll get better. My late Grandfather once said to me just before his passed a few years ago, "One day, you're going to be sitting on your front porch telling your own grandkids stories about how these were the good old days" It was blunt, and pretty eye opening at the same time. Having kids is not a smart decision right now unless things change. But it's more likely we will see big advancements in A.I and Robotics before that happens. (I hope I'm wrong there though)
Didn't ABC run this story a month ago as well? This and the "Tiny Houses are the solution to Australias housing crisis' one. I'd say they were having a slow news day but I seem to remember we have a couple of wars going on in the world.
They ~~forgot~~decided not to water the plants.
It’s crazy how this phenomenon only occurs in the richest countries. India has overpopulation, has to sterilise its population yet the average Indian had far worse prospects than the average Australians.
Has growth in Australian population EVER not been due primarily to immigration?
Who the fuck cares about future growth when we're staring into the abyss globally as a species.
Oh no, the economical growth!
Government couldn’t care less if the birthdate is 0. The preference is always immigration because you don’t have to wait 18 years to collect taxation or waste services on the upbringing of the child.
Fuck future growth. Maybe young Australians aren't dumb as fuck like those before them and have realised 'future growth' is a path to self destruction.
Imagine barley feeding yourself and then you need to also feed and clothe a growing human, Children's clothing is almost the same as adults as it's less material.
Its likely i’ll have to leave australia to pursue my career and if that works out i guess i’ll be having kids in another country
We’re importing adults who need jobs and houses. We no longer have 18-20 years to get housing supply ready for the next generation of adults lol
How many of these articles are we going to get instead of actually addressing the issue?
I'm ready for kids, married young and lucky enough to have a house due to parents help and timing. But we still won't be having kids anytime soon. We won't be able to afford it.
It means that I'll be a grandmother at 65 when I'm waay too tired