Baby Blip or Boom

Total Births are up for the third year in a row in Australia with 254,600 births recorded for 2004 (251,200 in 2003). The last time births were at the 2004 level was 1995. These figures come from the latest ABS Demographic Statistics released on Friday. This gives a total fertility rate of 1.774 (babies divided by women). The Australian total fertility rate needs to be 2.1 to maintain a stable population (ignoring migration). Government baby bonuses from 1 July 2004 have added incentives for a fertility increase, which gets an uplift this year from July. There are however likely to be a range of explanations the fertility trends.

An essay by social researcher Hugh Mackay in the Sydney Morning Herald?s Spectrum highlights the difficulty of getting real truths for trends from conventional social research. He says that when he knows the fertility rate has been falling, he is inclined to believe women?s group discussions which talk about desire to keep options open, reluctance to sacrifice lifestyle or capitalize on education and to build a career before or instead of having children. Equally likely but not stated reasons could be lack of trust that their partner will hang around for the long haul or unresolved conflict with a mother who demands the pleasure of grandchildren. The main theme of Mackay?s essay is that the truth about people?s lives is located in their personal stories, and that?s where they prefer it to remain. This leads to a contention that there are more life truths to learn from the subconscious revelations of writers of fiction than from ?objective? social research.

All FinDem News Items:

News Items by Topic: