Paul Spoonley: Massey University Sociologist on New Zealand's falling birth rates

Concern over falling birth rates after new figures show it's the lowest since World War II. 

Stats NZ says the national fertility rate was 1.5 births per woman, down from 1.60. 

Massey University sociologist Paul Spoonley told Mike Hosking New Zealand is following the trends of other western nations, with many European countries recording far lower birth rates. 

He says it means around 500-1000 fewer births in New Zealand each year. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Interesting new numbers. Meantime, around our population there are five
point three four million of us in the year two July.
That's a bump of a bit over ninety three twenty
thousand newborn seventy three thousand migrants. Massa University sociologist Paul
Spoonley back, Well, there's Paul. Very good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Make I noticed the infant mortality rate is bumped. Is
that some sort of administrative era, as anything weird happened
there or not?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
No, I don't think so. You'll notice that what they
do is they produce figures and you've just quoted them,
and then they correct them later. So I think it's
probably just a rechecking of the statistics.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Okay, fewer births. Is that part of a Western world?
We're not having as many children as we used to think.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yes, it is, and so our births are dropping by
about five hundred to one thousand two year. So there's
each year on year we've dropped by between that five
hundred and thousand, we're down at one point five to
three per woman. We've got a long way to go
to catch up with Italy or Portugal or Germany, where

(01:07):
it's down about one point two burst per woman. But
we're getting there, and we've seen some of the biggest
drops in fertility in recent years that we see ever
seen in this country.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
What is the big picture scenario for that? Do we
want to grow our population or not? If we do,
given what you've just told us, do we then have
to do it basically through immigration.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yes. To answer the second part of your question, Mike,
the only thing that will grow our population in any
number will be immigration. So the latest figures show a
drop to about ninety three thousand. Remember if you'd talk
to me a few months ago, we would have been
talking about one hundred and thirty thousand additional people as

(01:53):
a result of net migration in New Zealand. So migration
is our population growth factor. The question for me, and
I think for many people, is what is the appropriate
level of annual population growth, particularly when we talk about Auckland,
where we know that the population growth exceeds the ability

(02:15):
of the city to provide for that population growth, so
all our infrastruction services simply do not catch up with
that population growth.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Is that? And it's fascinated me for years that this
whole thing that you stay where you land and everyone
lands or most people land in Auckland. Are we disproportionate
as a country with such a large chunk of our
population in one city or do a lot of countries
have that issue as well?

Speaker 2 (02:41):
No? No, the only other country that has a similar
proportion of its population in one city is Ireland and Dublin.
And so when you think about it, we're heading towards
what we estimate to be the case in about a
decade or more, is that forty percent of all New
Zealanders will live in Auckland and three quarters of the

(03:02):
population will live in the top half of the North Ireland.
So is that something that we want to see? And
in most countries that's not the case. So if you
take the UK where I am at the moment, London
is the primate, the dominant city, but only a little
over twenty percent of the population live in that city.
So it's disproportionate compared with other countries. And I think

(03:26):
the assumption and your question about you know, between fifteen
and sixty percent of our migrants coming to New Zealand
end up in auclub Well, we could do things to
disperse that migrant population around the country, but we seem
unwilling to do so, and I don't know why.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Indeed, all right, Paul, appreciate your time and have a
good break in that particular part of the world. Paul Spoonley,
the Messi University sociologist. I think we've tried partially. You know,
you get extra points. Whinston Peter's come up with the idea.
I think a number of years ago you get extra
points if you moved to a rural center. It just
didn't work. People seem to like who stay where they
land for whatever reason. But a debate for another day.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
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