1y ago

New Zealand's birth rate falls to lowest since World War II

www.rnz.co.nz

53 comments

Almost like you make it unbearable for the poor to have children. The ones that tend to have more rather than less.
Korea and Japan finding out what happens when replacement levels drop off the graph
- From what I understand Japan has some of the highest health outcomes in the world and has a very high standard of living.
  I don't think South Korea is not far behind them either.
  
  Doesn't Japan have a working culture that glorifies long working hours and dedication to work, leaving little to no time for socialising and relationships? or has that changed in the last few years?
  
  The thing isn't health outcomes, it's the significant societal and economic problems happening and on the horizon that is the worry.
  
  What is a health outcome? As in life expectancy? Or ?
That was despite a 3 percent increase in the number of women aged between 15 and 49 - when most births occur.
This combination - fewer births and more women of child-bearing age - resulted in a record-low fertility rate of 1.56 births per woman.
The total fertility rate has been below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman since 2013.
It's been fascinating to see this global trend take hold. The ramifications will be interesting to say the least.
- It had to happen sooner or later. We can't grow the global population forever.
I guess this is why we need immigration. Not enough of us are popping out babies.
- Do you guys have a housing crisis at the moment like we do in Aus?
  
  Yes. Same goes for Canada, USA, and most of Europe. It's a world wide problem apparently.
  
  It's worse here than in Aus.
I'd also like to point out that while births has gently fallen over the past few years, the " lowest annual natural increase since World War II" that the article mentions may have been related to the spike in deaths since COVID: https://www.stats.govt.nz/topics/births-and-deaths
- I'm not a stats person at all so I may be confused.. but the article is using figures from 2023 and that graph only goes to 2022. They say the natural increase was only 19071 last year, while deaths were ever so slightly lower than 2022. Natural increase in 2022 was 20313. Were we still having a lot of COVID related deaths last year?
  Edit:
  This combination - fewer births and more women of child-bearing age - resulted in a record-low fertility rate of 1.56 births per woman.
  The total fertility rate has been below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman since 2013. The replacement rate is the number of births women need to have on average for the population to replace itself in the long term, with no migration.
  Apparently we've been below the replacement rate since 2013!?
  
  Were we still having a lot of COVID related deaths last year?
  I thought so, but it seems our baseline is now only a couple of deaths per week. The graph I linked doesn't have 2023 data, and I can't seem to find any, so I'd be curious to see if deaths fell last year or stayed high.
  Apparently we’ve been below the replacement rate since 2013!?
  Weird. We have more births than deaths, so I'm curious about this. Any experts that can weigh in on the complexities of this? Is it something to do with people living longer so the low birthrate doesn't show in the statistics of people currently dying, or something like that?

53 comments