June 12, 2025 • 12 mins
This week, the United Nations released its most comprehensive report yet on the state of fertility around the world. The report confirmed that global fertility rates are dropping, and that it’s not necessarily for the reasons we’re often told it is. In today’s podcast, we’ll unpack the findings of the UN report, how this is manifesting here in Australia, and how governments can address this issue moving forward.
Hosts: Zara Seidler and Billi FitzSimons
Producer: Elliot Lawry
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Already and this is the daily This is the Daily
ohs oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday,
the thirteenth of June. I'm Zara Seidler.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
I'm Billy fitz Simon's.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
This week, the United Nations released its most comprehensive report
yet on the state of fertility around the world. The
report confirmed the global fertility rates are dropping and that
it's not necessarily for the reasons we're often told it is.
In today's podcast, we'll unpack the findings of the UN report,
how this is manifesting here in Australia, and how governments
(00:42):
can address this issue moving forward.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Zara, when we talk about fertility rates, I feel like
we often talk about specific countries. So I know, in Japan,
for example, we often talk about the declining birth rates
the big way. But it's interesting that this report is
looking at the globe as a whole and what is
happening absolutely everywhere with the fertility rate.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, So wh it's such a big report because it
is looking at the state of play across a bunch
of different countries from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and it's finding
a similar kind of through line or a similar trend.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
So what did it find?
Speaker 2 (01:20):
So essentially the shorthands is that it found that global
fertility rates are declining across the board. According to that
same report, the human population is projected to reach its
peak within the century, but then from there it's going
to fall. So I feel like for our whole life,
we've spoken about how you know, we have more people
on Earth than ever an overpopulation, But what this is
(01:41):
saying is that actually that human population is going to fall.
One in four people are currently living in a country
where the size of the population is understood to have
already hit that peak, and so I think it's helpful
to paint the picture here in Australia, where our birth
rate has been falling for decades, and I know you
and I have spoken about this on the pod before.
If we go back to the fifties, the birth rate
(02:02):
in Australia was three point five babies per woman. In
two thousand and eight, that birth rate was two point
zero two children per woman, and then in twenty twenty
three it was one point five children per woman.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Wow, so it has dropped quite significantly.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, it's only going in one way, and it's pretty
clear that there is this trend over the last few
decades of women in Australia having less children.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I think it's helpful whenever we're talking about a declining
birth rate to understand why it can be considered an issue,
particularly an economic issue, which you don't often think about,
you know, women having babies as something that is global
or even on the specific country level, an economic issue
for that country.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
But it kind of is.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah. I mean, it's something you and I strangely find
ourselves speaking about a lot, and certainly when you've sat
down and interviewed treasurers or shadow treasures, this is something
that's come up. The reason it's an issue is that
basically we have an aging population at the same time
as we have a shrinking working population. And so if
I just unpack that, really clearly we've got people getting
(03:11):
older and living for longer, which is great. I mean
it depends on who you are. Objectively a good thing
living standards, but fewer people that are then of working
age and who are contributing to the economy, and so
the consequence of that is that there is this increased
economic pressure on governments. So, like I just said, that's
because we have less people being able to work and
(03:34):
pay taxes, which is the key way that the government
raises money, and more people in that aging population who
require assistance, whether that be health services, the pension, you know,
whatever it is that they need in their old age.
There is this incongruence between where the money is coming
from and what it's being spent on. And the other
thing I think that isn't spoken about very often though,
(03:55):
is the fact that it means there's a lot of
pressure on younger people to care for old people and
the economic burden that that can carry if they have
to leave the workforce for that.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
So to put it really simply, and maybe this is
too simplistic, but we have less people paying taxes and
more people needing tax payer money.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Correct, got it.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
So we know that it can be a bad thing
for economies. What did this report tell us about why
there is this declining birth rate?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah? Well, I mean this is the golden question and
it's certainly the one that this UN report was trying
to answer. I'll just quickly run through what this report
actually was because I'd certainly never seen anything of its kind. Essentially,
it was undertaken by the UN Population Fund and It
surveyed fourteen thousand people across fourteen different countries about their
(04:43):
fertility intentions. The final report was called The Real Fertility Crisis,
and it was a very very long read. So I
guess I'll just give you a too long didn't read,
which is to say that the fertility rate is declining
not because people don't want to have children, but rather
that they are prevented from making the decision to have
(05:05):
children because of external factors. So let me just really
clearly simplify that the UN isn't saying that there is
a fertility crisis because young people don't want to have kids.
What they're saying is hundreds of millions of people aren't
having the number of children they want because the conditions
just aren't right for them to be able to do that.
And before I go any further, Billy, I do just
(05:26):
want to highlight that, of course, there are factors, including infertility,
that can prevent people very clearly from starting families, and
that's really really significant. But for the sake of this discussion,
the UN is broadly looking at the fertility rate and
it's trying to understand if it's because people want less
children or because they feel like they have to have
less children, and essentially the report finds the latter, it's
(05:49):
that they feel like they have to have less children.
The UN Population Fund director said, it's often assumed or
implied that fertility rates are the results of free choice. Fortunately,
that is not the whole picture.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
That is so interesting and relatable.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, I think it is, and I mean I feel
like people anecdotally probably know this to be the case.
But this is the first kind of report that has
told us, or at least has the data to support
the fact that it's not that. Broadly, across the board,
young people are saying no, we're not interested in having children.
And it was really interesting. The report compiled a bunch
of headlines from across the globe that said like young
(06:27):
feminist women no longer want children, or they've gone a
different path than all these headlines, and it was like, no,
this isn't actually the issue that when you ask people
is what's coming back. It's that there are these conditions
that are not allowing them to realize what it is
they might actually want.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, I have so many more questions, but just quickly,
here is a message from our spots up Zara, you
mentioned that there were some other reasons why women and
couples are choosing to not have more children.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
What are those other reasons.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
We'll go first through the economic reasons, because those make
up kind of the first three main reasons, the first
being that thirty nine percent of respondents said that financial
limitation had affected or would affect their ability to achieve
their desired family size. Twenty one percent said that it
was about job insecurity, nineteen percent said it was about housing.
(07:21):
So clearly that economic context that people find themselves in
is playing a really, really big role. Another interesting stat
from the report, and it's certainly something I feel like
comes up in a lot of conversations I'm a part
of or I'm listening to, is that one in five
people said fears about the future, including things like climate change, wars,
and pandemics, would lead them or has led them to
(07:43):
having fewer children than desired. Interestingly, only twelve percent of
people cited infertility or difficulty conceiving for not having the
number of children that they wanted, and I was quite
surprised by that number, to be honest, it was much
lower than I thought it would be. And of course,
this is just one report. This hasn't spoken to every
(08:03):
woman everywhere, but I just thought that that was interesting.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, often when I think about infertility, I think that
in the past ten years or so, we have come
leaps and bounds when it comes to having really open
discussions about the issues surrounding infertility and how it can
feel to be a woman going through that.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
But I guess maybe it's not the case that more
women are experiencing infertility, but it's the case that more
women are talking about it.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah. And what the report actually highlighted was that one
of the big areas of concern is the inaccessibility of
these fertility services or the assistance that they can provide.
That while there are many in the world that can
access them, for so many they are still inaccessible and
that's one of the things that they think need to
change for more people to have the family or the
(08:50):
size of the family that they want.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Okay, so we know there's a declining fertility rate. We
know that's a problem, and we know why it's happening.
Did the un have any ideas about how to solve
this issue?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Well, the report was basically saying that attempts that governments
are making around the world, things like a baby bonus
or an incentive to have a baby isn't actually getting
to the root cause of the issue, and that they
don't believe that that's actually going to move the dial
at all. I want to focus in on one example
of these sorts of incentives that we've actually spoken about
(09:24):
on this podcast before, but it's a local version, so
I think it's quite interesting, and that was the idea
put forward by Matt Canavan. He's a National Senator. His
recommendation was to give couples and one hundred thousand dollars
loan for their first home when they have their first child,
and then if they have three children that the loan
would be wiped And while shockingly the UN didn't specifically
(09:45):
address Man Canavan, I don't think his own party has
addressed that proposal. However, broadly, the UN did talk about
this this movement of you know, we've seen it in Hungary,
we've seen it in other countries, of offering specific incentives,
especially to women to have more children. What it was
saying was investing in structural changes is the only thing
(10:08):
that is going to shift the dial. And when I
say structural changes, we're talking about things like paid parental leave,
the accessibility of child's care, addressing housing issues, and ensuring
access to reproductive health services. They're saying, if you offer
those bonuses, that's not going to do anything. Do all
of these things and maybe then we'll see the fertility
rate rise again in the opposite way that it's been
(10:30):
going for decades.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
So they're saying, you can't fix this long term issue
with short term solutions exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
And again I feel like, you know, even if I
look at our comment section anytime we report on these
sorts of bonuses or incentives, like everyone in our comment
section is saying the same thing. That know, this wouldn't
be enough to actually shift the dial. But I think
having the un come out and have surveyed so many
people across the world and to have come to this conclusion,
(10:57):
it'll be interesting to see if any governments pick up
on it. You know, of course, here in Australia there
have been a lot of pieces of legislation when it
comes to paper rental leave and childcare, but perhaps not
this like suite of reforms aimed at raising the fertility rate.
It can be a bit of a hot topic and
people feel very strongly when they hear, especially male politicians
(11:17):
talking about it, so definitely an interesting one to see
if governments take up this kind of call to action.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Zara, thank you for taking us through that.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
It was one hundred and sixty page report, so we
very much appreciate you reading every single word and then
summarizing it for us here. And thank you so much
for listening to this episode of The Daily os. We'll
be back again this afternoon with your evening headlines, but
until then, have a great day.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda
bunge Lung Chalcotin woman from Gadigal Country. The Daily oz
acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of
the Gadigal people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and
Torrestrate island and nations. We pay our respects to the
first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Already and this is the daily This is the Daily
ohs oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday,
the thirteenth of June. I'm Zara Seidler.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
I'm Billy fitz Simon's.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
This week, the United Nations released its most comprehensive report
yet on the state of fertility around the world. The
report confirmed the global fertility rates are dropping and that
it's not necessarily for the reasons we're often told it is.
In today's podcast, we'll unpack the findings of the UN report,
how this is manifesting here in Australia, and how governments
(00:42):
can address this issue moving forward.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Zara, when we talk about fertility rates, I feel like
we often talk about specific countries. So I know, in Japan,
for example, we often talk about the declining birth rates
the big way. But it's interesting that this report is
looking at the globe as a whole and what is
happening absolutely everywhere with the fertility rate.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, So wh it's such a big report because it
is looking at the state of play across a bunch
of different countries from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and it's finding
a similar kind of through line or a similar trend.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
So what did it find?
Speaker 2 (01:20):
So essentially the shorthands is that it found that global
fertility rates are declining across the board. According to that
same report, the human population is projected to reach its
peak within the century, but then from there it's going
to fall. So I feel like for our whole life,
we've spoken about how you know, we have more people
on Earth than ever an overpopulation, But what this is
(01:41):
saying is that actually that human population is going to fall.
One in four people are currently living in a country
where the size of the population is understood to have
already hit that peak, and so I think it's helpful
to paint the picture here in Australia, where our birth
rate has been falling for decades, and I know you
and I have spoken about this on the pod before.
If we go back to the fifties, the birth rate
(02:02):
in Australia was three point five babies per woman. In
two thousand and eight, that birth rate was two point
zero two children per woman, and then in twenty twenty
three it was one point five children per woman.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Wow, so it has dropped quite significantly.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, it's only going in one way, and it's pretty
clear that there is this trend over the last few
decades of women in Australia having less children.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I think it's helpful whenever we're talking about a declining
birth rate to understand why it can be considered an issue,
particularly an economic issue, which you don't often think about,
you know, women having babies as something that is global
or even on the specific country level, an economic issue
for that country.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
But it kind of is.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah. I mean, it's something you and I strangely find
ourselves speaking about a lot, and certainly when you've sat
down and interviewed treasurers or shadow treasures, this is something
that's come up. The reason it's an issue is that
basically we have an aging population at the same time
as we have a shrinking working population. And so if
I just unpack that, really clearly we've got people getting
(03:11):
older and living for longer, which is great. I mean
it depends on who you are. Objectively a good thing
living standards, but fewer people that are then of working
age and who are contributing to the economy, and so
the consequence of that is that there is this increased
economic pressure on governments. So, like I just said, that's
because we have less people being able to work and
(03:34):
pay taxes, which is the key way that the government
raises money, and more people in that aging population who
require assistance, whether that be health services, the pension, you know,
whatever it is that they need in their old age.
There is this incongruence between where the money is coming
from and what it's being spent on. And the other
thing I think that isn't spoken about very often though,
(03:55):
is the fact that it means there's a lot of
pressure on younger people to care for old people and
the economic burden that that can carry if they have
to leave the workforce for that.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
So to put it really simply, and maybe this is
too simplistic, but we have less people paying taxes and
more people needing tax payer money.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Correct, got it.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
So we know that it can be a bad thing
for economies. What did this report tell us about why
there is this declining birth rate?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah? Well, I mean this is the golden question and
it's certainly the one that this UN report was trying
to answer. I'll just quickly run through what this report
actually was because I'd certainly never seen anything of its kind. Essentially,
it was undertaken by the UN Population Fund and It
surveyed fourteen thousand people across fourteen different countries about their
(04:43):
fertility intentions. The final report was called The Real Fertility Crisis,
and it was a very very long read. So I
guess I'll just give you a too long didn't read,
which is to say that the fertility rate is declining
not because people don't want to have children, but rather
that they are prevented from making the decision to have
(05:05):
children because of external factors. So let me just really
clearly simplify that the UN isn't saying that there is
a fertility crisis because young people don't want to have kids.
What they're saying is hundreds of millions of people aren't
having the number of children they want because the conditions
just aren't right for them to be able to do that.
And before I go any further, Billy, I do just
(05:26):
want to highlight that, of course, there are factors, including infertility,
that can prevent people very clearly from starting families, and
that's really really significant. But for the sake of this discussion,
the UN is broadly looking at the fertility rate and
it's trying to understand if it's because people want less
children or because they feel like they have to have
less children, and essentially the report finds the latter, it's
(05:49):
that they feel like they have to have less children.
The UN Population Fund director said, it's often assumed or
implied that fertility rates are the results of free choice. Fortunately,
that is not the whole picture.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
That is so interesting and relatable.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, I think it is, and I mean I feel
like people anecdotally probably know this to be the case.
But this is the first kind of report that has
told us, or at least has the data to support
the fact that it's not that. Broadly, across the board,
young people are saying no, we're not interested in having children.
And it was really interesting. The report compiled a bunch
of headlines from across the globe that said like young
(06:27):
feminist women no longer want children, or they've gone a
different path than all these headlines, and it was like, no,
this isn't actually the issue that when you ask people
is what's coming back. It's that there are these conditions
that are not allowing them to realize what it is
they might actually want.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, I have so many more questions, but just quickly,
here is a message from our spots up Zara, you
mentioned that there were some other reasons why women and
couples are choosing to not have more children.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
What are those other reasons.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
We'll go first through the economic reasons, because those make
up kind of the first three main reasons, the first
being that thirty nine percent of respondents said that financial
limitation had affected or would affect their ability to achieve
their desired family size. Twenty one percent said that it
was about job insecurity, nineteen percent said it was about housing.
(07:21):
So clearly that economic context that people find themselves in
is playing a really, really big role. Another interesting stat
from the report, and it's certainly something I feel like
comes up in a lot of conversations I'm a part
of or I'm listening to, is that one in five
people said fears about the future, including things like climate change, wars,
and pandemics, would lead them or has led them to
(07:43):
having fewer children than desired. Interestingly, only twelve percent of
people cited infertility or difficulty conceiving for not having the
number of children that they wanted, and I was quite
surprised by that number, to be honest, it was much
lower than I thought it would be. And of course,
this is just one report. This hasn't spoken to every
(08:03):
woman everywhere, but I just thought that that was interesting.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, often when I think about infertility, I think that
in the past ten years or so, we have come
leaps and bounds when it comes to having really open
discussions about the issues surrounding infertility and how it can
feel to be a woman going through that.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
But I guess maybe it's not the case that more
women are experiencing infertility, but it's the case that more
women are talking about it.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah. And what the report actually highlighted was that one
of the big areas of concern is the inaccessibility of
these fertility services or the assistance that they can provide.
That while there are many in the world that can
access them, for so many they are still inaccessible and
that's one of the things that they think need to
change for more people to have the family or the
(08:50):
size of the family that they want.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Okay, so we know there's a declining fertility rate. We
know that's a problem, and we know why it's happening.
Did the un have any ideas about how to solve
this issue?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Well, the report was basically saying that attempts that governments
are making around the world, things like a baby bonus
or an incentive to have a baby isn't actually getting
to the root cause of the issue, and that they
don't believe that that's actually going to move the dial
at all. I want to focus in on one example
of these sorts of incentives that we've actually spoken about
(09:24):
on this podcast before, but it's a local version, so
I think it's quite interesting, and that was the idea
put forward by Matt Canavan. He's a National Senator. His
recommendation was to give couples and one hundred thousand dollars
loan for their first home when they have their first child,
and then if they have three children that the loan
would be wiped And while shockingly the UN didn't specifically
(09:45):
address Man Canavan, I don't think his own party has
addressed that proposal. However, broadly, the UN did talk about
this this movement of you know, we've seen it in Hungary,
we've seen it in other countries, of offering specific incentives,
especially to women to have more children. What it was
saying was investing in structural changes is the only thing
(10:08):
that is going to shift the dial. And when I
say structural changes, we're talking about things like paid parental leave,
the accessibility of child's care, addressing housing issues, and ensuring
access to reproductive health services. They're saying, if you offer
those bonuses, that's not going to do anything. Do all
of these things and maybe then we'll see the fertility
rate rise again in the opposite way that it's been
(10:30):
going for decades.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
So they're saying, you can't fix this long term issue
with short term solutions exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
And again I feel like, you know, even if I
look at our comment section anytime we report on these
sorts of bonuses or incentives, like everyone in our comment
section is saying the same thing. That know, this wouldn't
be enough to actually shift the dial. But I think
having the un come out and have surveyed so many
people across the world and to have come to this conclusion,
(10:57):
it'll be interesting to see if any governments pick up
on it. You know, of course, here in Australia there
have been a lot of pieces of legislation when it
comes to paper rental leave and childcare, but perhaps not
this like suite of reforms aimed at raising the fertility rate.
It can be a bit of a hot topic and
people feel very strongly when they hear, especially male politicians
(11:17):
talking about it, so definitely an interesting one to see
if governments take up this kind of call to action.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Zara, thank you for taking us through that.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
It was one hundred and sixty page report, so we
very much appreciate you reading every single word and then
summarizing it for us here. And thank you so much
for listening to this episode of The Daily os. We'll
be back again this afternoon with your evening headlines, but
until then, have a great day.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda
bunge Lung Chalcotin woman from Gadigal Country. The Daily oz
acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of
the Gadigal people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and
Torrestrate island and nations. We pay our respects to the
first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
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