I was a youngish reporter at federal parliament when former Treasurer Peter Costello issued his famed appeal for Australians to have more babies.

“You should have one for the husband, one for the wife and one for the country,” he told us in a packed press conference on budget day 2004. That night Costello announced billions in new spending to support families including a maternity payment that upgraded his earlier “baby bonus”.

Illustration by Simon LetchCredit:

But Aussies never came close to heeding Costello’s advice: two decades on and Australia’s fertility rate – which measures the number of births per woman – is at rock bottom.

When Costello made his “one for the country” quip, Australia’s rate was around 1.8. The latest official estimate put the fertility rate at 1.5 in 2023 and analysis of ultrasound data by forecaster Oxford Economics suggests that has now fallen to just 1.4. (A fertility rate of 2.1 births per woman is needed to ensure a stable population, not including migration.)

It’s a similar story across the globe. The number of births worldwide peaked in 2012 at just over 146 million and has fallen sharply since; the fertility rate has declined in 90 per cent of countries for the past 25 years.

In many countries, including Australia, fertility rates have been falling faster than expected. The federal government’s 2015 Intergenerational Report assumed our rate would remain “at 1.9 over the next 40 years, which is consistent with the observed trend in fertility over the past 35 years.” That official prediction, made less than a decade ago, now looks wildly optimistic.

An........

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