Is Anthony Albanese discouraging couples from making babies? Fertility rates stay low as cost-of-living bites
Fertility rates remain low as the cost of living, rising rents and rising interest rates force couples to delay starting families.
Australia’s fertility rate has bounced back from a record low but is still much lower than when Labor came to power more than four years ago amid fears Reserve Bank rate hikes will see more couples delay starting a family.
The average number of babies for every woman of childbearing age edged up to 1.497 last year from 2024’s record low of 1.481, new Australian Bureau of Statistics data released on Friday showed.
The number of registered births increased by 2.6 per cent, or 7585 extra babies, to a three-year high of 299,903, with boys making up 51.5 per cent of newborns.
Sign up to The Nightly's newsletters.
Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.
By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.But 2025 was also a year of three interest rate cuts from the Reserve Bank and with five hikes in 2026 so far, it’s possible fertility could decline again.
Demographer Mark McCrindle said soaring mortgage costs were likely to see more couples delay starting a family with 32 now the median age for women giving birth.
“Housing costs and living costs are the number one factor and that leads to couples starting families later,” he told The Nightly.
“This is the key factor that’s leading to the delay in starting families and smaller families and therefore a lower birthrate.
“The key pre-requisite for most couples in starting a family is getting home security in terms of ownership.
“Even if it’s an apartment or a townhouse rather than a detached house — they want to own it and not rent it and so the mortgage increases fully impact upon young couples at this stage of starting families or looking to grow families.”
Net overseas migration also makes up three-quarters of Australia’s population increase, and Treasury is expecting deaths to outnumber births from the 2060s, which would make Australia even more reliant on foreigners to maintain a working age population to care for an increasing number of elderly people.
“We’ll be entirely reliant on migration and migration’s not doing much to change the median age because the average age of an arrival through migration is only slightly younger than the average age of an Australian, which is 38, whereas growth through a birth massively decreases the median age,” Mr McCrindle said.
“We’re going to, without turning around this birthrate, end up with a population decrease from a natural perspective.
“We’re going to have an older, average age, we’re going to have an increasing cost burden on taxpayers because they are going to be fewer of them relative to the non-working age population over the long term and therefore economic challenges as well.”
The latest fertility rate is still much lower than the 1.631 level of 2022 during Labor’s first year in power with the latest number much lower than 2015’s 1.796 figure.
“Each percentage point change makes a massive difference in the number of young people coming through into the workforce and education,” Mr McCrindle said.
Australia hasn’t had a fertility rate at of “two” since 2008 in a year that covered the Global Financial Crisis, marking the biggest spike since it fell below the replacement level of 2.1 in 1976.
It began declining again from 2009 after Kevin Rudd’s first-term Labor government turned his Liberal predecessor John Howard’s $5000 lump sum baby bonus into 13 instalments of $385.
Julia Gillard replaced the baby bonus with a paid parental leave scheme in 2011 and no side of politics since then has moved to revive a lump sum payment policy for new mums.
