AUSTRALIANS are having less babies per woman now than any time in the last 85 years, Australian Bureau of Statistic data has revealed, however Shepparton mums buck the nationwide trend.
The total fertility rate in Australia – the rate of how many children are born per woman – has fallen to 1.66, the lowest rate since records began in 1935. Victoria even pulls down the nation’s average, recording the lowest total fertility rate of 1.53 babies per woman.
The total number of registered births also dipped in 2019, down 3 percent to 305,832 (however this is still significantly higher than the 249,636 registered births only 19 years earlier in 2000).
In a mathematical sense, for a country to maintain its population, a total fertility rate of 2.1 is required. However, Australia dipped below that threshold mark in 1976, back when the country’s population was 14.03 million.
Since then, the population growth of the country has been primarily driven through immigration. Today, roughly 29.7 percent of Australia’s population was born overseas.
For reference, while there were 305,832 registered births in 2019, in a similar period (2018-19 financial year), the Australia’s population increased by 239,600 people due to net overseas migration.
In the Shepparton region, total fertility rates are higher than the rest of Victoria- generally hovering around the 2.24 births per woman mark – however dipped last year to their lowest levels in the last eight years to 2.14.
