It was a great night on Wednesday 12 November for the Dawson Centre’s Melbourne Launch, with the event at capacity. I am very grateful to Fr Dean Mathieson for hosting us at St Peter’s Parish Centre in Toorak. Archbishop Julian Porteous delivered an engaging address on the importance of the Christian faith for arresting the decline of western civilisation and in particular the need to defend religious freedom.
Declining birthrate in the West
One particular contemporary issue that very clearly and tangibly demonstrates this decline and which is starting to receive some limited attention in the mainstream media is that of collapsing birth rates in the West.
The foundation of society is the family, which is itself built on the institution of marriage. It provides the loving and nurturing environment for having, raising and educating of children. Quite literally without the generation of children a society cannot exist and endure. As you might be aware a total fertility rate (the number of children each woman has in their lifetime), of 2.1 children is required to simply maintain the current population level. Anything below this rate means that the population will necessarily decline and the lower it drops the faster it will decline. This means that we need on average each woman to have between 2-3 children simply to maintain a stable population. All western nations, apart from Isreal, now sit below this bare minimum of 2.1 and in Australia we have fallen to a historic low of 1.48.
What I had not realised and what you are probably not aware of is that in demographic terms, once you hit a total fertility rate of around 1.41, which we are not far away from, it has proven virtually impossible to turn this decline around. Demographer Liz Allen at the Australian National University, has referred to this as a ‘point of no return’, stating that there are multiple examples showing that once this rate is reached, as far as we are currently aware, there is ‘really nothing’ that can be done (essentially by government) to effectively raise it to the required level of 2.1.
In real demographic terms then, in terms of total fertility numbers Australia sits at the precipice. If this decline is not arrested and turned around in coming years Australia, like other western nations, will effectively cease to exist at some point in the future. While we must of course recognise that that this will not take place in our lifetime, yet what we will begin to experience in the not-too-distant future is the beginnings of significant cultural and economic shocks caused by the declining population.
In Australia the immediate economic problems will arise from an ageing domestic population, where there are fewer workers to support increasing numbers of retirees and the elderly. More generally we will also be impacted by the significant decline in the population of what are currently our biggest export markets, China (TFR 1.0), Japan (TFR 1.15) and South Korea (TFR 0.76). These countries are already experiencing real declining populations with more deaths than births and very limited immigration. Based on their current birth rates these Asian nations will lose at least 30% of their population by 2075 and will be less than half their current size by 2100 if not sooner.
In basic economic terms declining population means less workers and less taxpayers, and in particular less demand for goods, both domestically and internationally. Shrinking societies and contracting economies are not conducive to human flourishing or flourishing communities.
What is the answer?
Unless significant action is taken now by governments, and the Australian community more broadly, our society is headed for a looming economic and social crisis the likes of which are historically unprecedented.
Some governments, like those in Australia and Canada, have tried to address the looming economic impact of the declining birth rate by significantly increasing immigration numbers. Yet while this provides a temporary population increase it has not halted or turned around the declining birth rate, in fact if anything it has seemingly worked to accelerate the decline through artificially raising housing costs by generating increased demand.
According to recent polling in Australia both men and women still desire to have two children, but it is the increasing high cost of housing, combined with recent significant increases in the cost of living, and stagnant wage growth, that is the major issue causing young couples to put off having a second child or having children all together.
The Dawson Centre believes that there is a way to address this existential crisis but one which requires fundamental economic and social change. Temporary and limited financial inducements, like a one-off baby bonus, will not work.
Men and women want to have more children; we simply have to make this financially possible. In simple terms what is required are fundamental changes in legislation and government policy around immigration, housing, taxation and family support payments that will provide long term financial relief and support that will significantly ease the financial challenges of having and raising children. Such changes would include implementing policies like income splitting for married couples on a single income, providing stay at home mothers equivalent payments to childcare subsidies and superannuation payments.
But before we can address specific legislative and policy changes what is required is a fundamental change in how we think about the role of government and politics more generally. What we have lost sight of in the modern era of big government is that government actually exist to support and serve the needs of families. Not the other way around. It is the family which is the original and natural human community.
This seems to have been better understood by politicians and political parties in Australia in the early twentieth century but has been completely lost in the intervening decades.
Over the coming months the Dawson Centre will seek to promote the kind of fundamental re-orientation we need in our political thinking to return the focus back to serving and supporting the natural family and developing and advocating for the kind of policies necessary to address the dire situation we find ourselves in.
Alexander Sidhu
Director of the Christopher Dawson Centre