September 21, 2025 • 13 mins
More stress, less friends, and fewer babies: These are some of the key trends that have come out of a major longitudinal study. The Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, aka 'Hilda', released its latest annual statistical report on Friday.
The findings show the lasting impacts of the pandemic on all Australians, including young people, whose well-being and social lives have taken significant hits since COVID-19… and are yet to recover. HILDA’s 20th report shows economic factors are having a major influence on our big life decisions, including financial and family planning.
To talk us through the latest findings, we're joined by the report's lead author, Dr Inga Lass, in today's deep dive.
Hosts: Sam Koslowski and Emma Gillespie
Producer: Orla Maher
Guest: Dr Inga Lass, Senior Research Fellow in the HILDA Survey team at the Melbourne Institute.
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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 this is the Daily ARS.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
This is the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Monday,
the twenty second of September. I'm Emma Gillespie, I'm Sam Kazawski,
More stress, less friends and fewer babies. These are some
(00:25):
of the key trends that have come out of a
major longitudinal study. The Household Income and Labor Dynamics in
Australia Survey, also known as HILDA, released its latest annual
statistical report on Friday. The finding show the lasting impacts
of the pandemic on all Australians, including young people, whose
wellbeing and social lives have taken significant hits since COVID
(00:47):
nineteen and the finding show are yet to recover.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
So hilda's been capturing trends across a broad cross section
of Australian life since two thousand and one by conducting
annual interviews with the same GRIPS group of sixteen thousand
Australians and their families. Respondents are asked about things like finances,
their social life, and physical and mental health. Now, hilda's
twentieth report shows economic factors are having a major influence
(01:14):
on our big life decisions, including financial and family planning.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
The report's lead author, dr Inger Lass, says potential parents
are growing more concerned about their financial security and the
costs of raising a child, and that pragmatism is outweighing
the emotional side of the decision. So to help us
understand more about these findings, Inger joins us in today's
deep Dive.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
But before we get into it, here.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Is a quick message from today's sponsor, dr Ingerlas. Welcome
to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Thanks for having me emma.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
We are talking about this latest information, latest data drop
from the Hilda Survey. I'm interested in particular in the
findings on the declining birth rate. We know that Australia's
birth rate has been falling in recent years and there
is a section in the report that speaks to fertility intentions. Firstly,
(02:10):
what does that mean and what have we learned about
fertility intentions from the latest survey.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
So official statistics tell us how many children people actually have,
and in the Hilda survey, we're asking people how many
children they would like to have. So that is what
we call fertility intentions. And what we see is that
the trend in fertility intention mirrors the actual fertility rate,
so that the desired fertility has also gone down over
(02:40):
the last twenty years or so. So still having two
children is what most people would like to have. That's
slightly less than half.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Of men and women.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
But we do see that people the prevalence of people
who would like three or more children has actually declined significantly.
And on the other hand, we now have a greater
share of people who would just like one child or
no children at all. So these two groups together now
make up around one quarter of men and women.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
What are the different factors impacting people's decision on whether
to have a child or not? Is cost of living
one of them?
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Yeah, there's actually two big group of factors that people
consider when having children, and one is the emotional side
of having children, the emotional benefits like having someone to love,
and the other one is costs and concerns and challenges
associated with having children, and we do see that these
two factors go in quite opposite directions over time. When
(03:47):
we ask potential parents about how important they think they are,
we see that the emotional benefits of having children they
have actually slightly declined in importance over time. But on
the other hand, the costs and challenges issociated with having children,
that's something that has become more and more important in
the minds of potential parents. So the major concern seems
(04:08):
to be the general cost of having children, and that
seems to feed well into the social and economic trends
that we have here in Australia, and especially one important
one is the rise in the cost of housing, both
in terms of renting and in terms of mortgage repayment.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
And young people who are thinking.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
About starting a family, they will often still be in
the phase where they have to save up money for
a down payment and they would have to think about
getting a bigger place, because families usually cannot do with
the one or two bedroom apartments that are found in
many cities. The other factor that we see in the
report is that childcare costs. Expenses for childcare have increased
(04:54):
quite considerably over the time that we've been interviewing people
over the past twenty years or so, and this is
another factor that looms very large in the minds of
people because usually both parents would like to be employed.
If you don't have grandparents in the background who can
take care of the children, you're relying on other types
(05:17):
of childcare, and so these costs are often very expensive
to parents and they're also quite expensive in Australia in
international comparison.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Young Australians or people of that age where they're thinking
about maybe starting a family. Is the feedback that they
are having to choose between where they live, how they live,
what their housing looks like, and starting a family.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
I think it means that if you want cheaper housing,
if you want affordable housing, you will have to move
towards the outskirts of the city or into regional areas. However,
many of the jobs are concentrated in the cities, so
that would result of and in relatively long commutes. We
(06:02):
do see that fathers are among the groups who have
the longest commutes overall.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
The report also mentions this concept called intensive parenting as
a bit of a more contemporary trend in parenting style.
What is this term? What does it mean?
Speaker 4 (06:19):
But that is a norm that parents are expected to
spend as much money and time and energy as possible
into the development of their children and put their children's
needs above everything else. This really sets the bar quite
high for parenting and parenthood and I would think that
(06:39):
it keeps some people from deciding for children to begin with,
and the people who do, but they want to be
this intensive parent, they will end up having relatively small
families because only this is when you can concentrate all
your time and money on very few children.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
And yeah, the survey also looks at overall attitudes towards marriage,
parenting relationships. Is there a link between shifts in those
attitudes and fertility trends?
Speaker 4 (07:13):
We do see that people who have more Eganitarian attitudes
they tend to desire smaller families. I can imagine that
if you like to divide work and family equally between
the couple, that's still quite challenging, and that becomes also
more difficult if you have many children.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
How do young Australians feel about marriage? How has that
attitude kind of shifted over time?
Speaker 5 (07:43):
So we see that people still disagree with the statement
that marriage is an outdated institution, so they still see
value in it, but it's no longer a.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
Thought of necessary as a life time commitment no matter what.
So if the relationship struggles for some reason, then separating
has become more acceptable, even if there are children.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
The latest findings tell us that the proportion of people
in psychological distress has trended upwards since twenty thirteen. The
prevalence of distress among young people in particular has risen substantially.
You've looked into the role of friendships as a significant
source of joy in people's lives. What can you tell
(08:32):
me about the relationship between friendships and wellbeing.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
Indeed, friendships are a very important source of social connection.
It provides us with emotional support, so we're having somebody
to talk to combat tied in, but also provides practical support.
We have somebody we can call for help. And we
do see that there is a connection between people feeling
that they don't have many friends and people feeling lonely
(09:00):
and being more prone to poor mental health. On the
other hand, the people who feel that they have many friends,
they are less likely to feel lonely and less likely
to be in poor mental health. So clearly having friends
is a protective factor against mental health problems.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
But on the other hand, the.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
Causality can also go the other way, in that people
who already have mental health problems will also find it
harder to maintain social relationships.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Obviously, you know this survey has been running over many decades,
during which time our daily lives have shifted to incorporate
social media. Does social media play a role in our
interpersonal connections and friendships?
Speaker 4 (09:45):
What we do see is that agreement with the statement
I seem to have a lot of friends with what
we call the perceived number of friends that has declined
considerably over time. And the interesting thing is that the
COVID nineteen pandemic is one major factor here. We see
big declines here which are easy to explain through lockdowns
(10:07):
and social distancing measures. Socializing has definitely taken a huge
hit during the pandemic, and what is interesting is is
that it hasn't really recovered very much afterwards. So apparently
people are now used to staying more in home and
interacting with people on a digital basis, or maybe not
(10:29):
at all, But really this has started much earlier, so
since twenty ten, we see the perceived number of friends
decline and we think that social media could be one
of the driving forces here and that people and especially
young people who are also very much affected by this
decline in friendships. They spend more time online and it's
(10:52):
easier to build connections there. But apparently these connections do
not have the same death as people you meet in
real life and interact face to face with on a
regular basis.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
There are, obviously, you know, significant concern areas, and sometimes
when we go through this data it can feel a
little bit bleak. But what about the more hopeful findings.
Is there cause for optimism? What sort of stands out
to you as telling a more positive story from the
latest data set.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
That would be a totally different area. But personally, I
do a lot of work on working from home and
commuting times, and this one good news that we can
get from the report is that commuting times have stayed
quite low since the pandemic.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
They were very much on.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
The rise before and we had very long commutes, especially
in the major cities in Australia up until twenty nineteen,
and that all changed with the pandemic with many people
changing into working from home. Our data only reaches until
twenty twenty three, but what we can see until this
point is that because working from home has remained quite
(12:03):
prevalent in the labor market, so have commuting times also
remained relatively low. And I think that is a good
news for people because we know that long commutes are
very bad for people's health as well.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
There can be a major stressor.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
And on the other hand it's also good for infrastructure
and traffic congestion and so on.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
What are your predictions for the next year, five years,
or ten years of Hillder survey data. Are there any
key areas that we should be paying attention to or there.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Will be so many interesting topics coming up. Probably you
never know what comes up. I think this digital age
will mean that we will look a lot into a
use of social media, for example, but also we have
new topics like online bullying that will be in later
(12:59):
editions of the report. I think also the topic of
our mental health will be one that will be important
and economic well being and that will be an important
for in your future as well.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Fascinating stuff. Thank you so much for joining us on
the podcast today.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Thank you so much to doctor inger Las and Emma
for that interview taking us through the latest findings. That's
all we've got for you for today's episode. We're going
to be back with the headlines a little later on.
Until then, have a great start to the week. My
name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung
(13:37):
Calcottin woman from Gadigol country.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on
the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to
all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay
our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both
past and present.
Already and this is this is the Daily ARS.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
This is the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Monday,
the twenty second of September. I'm Emma Gillespie, I'm Sam Kazawski,
More stress, less friends and fewer babies. These are some
(00:25):
of the key trends that have come out of a
major longitudinal study. The Household Income and Labor Dynamics in
Australia Survey, also known as HILDA, released its latest annual
statistical report on Friday. The finding show the lasting impacts
of the pandemic on all Australians, including young people, whose
wellbeing and social lives have taken significant hits since COVID
(00:47):
nineteen and the finding show are yet to recover.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
So hilda's been capturing trends across a broad cross section
of Australian life since two thousand and one by conducting
annual interviews with the same GRIPS group of sixteen thousand
Australians and their families. Respondents are asked about things like finances,
their social life, and physical and mental health. Now, hilda's
twentieth report shows economic factors are having a major influence
(01:14):
on our big life decisions, including financial and family planning.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
The report's lead author, dr Inger Lass, says potential parents
are growing more concerned about their financial security and the
costs of raising a child, and that pragmatism is outweighing
the emotional side of the decision. So to help us
understand more about these findings, Inger joins us in today's
deep Dive.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
But before we get into it, here.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Is a quick message from today's sponsor, dr Ingerlas. Welcome
to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Thanks for having me emma.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
We are talking about this latest information, latest data drop
from the Hilda Survey. I'm interested in particular in the
findings on the declining birth rate. We know that Australia's
birth rate has been falling in recent years and there
is a section in the report that speaks to fertility intentions. Firstly,
(02:10):
what does that mean and what have we learned about
fertility intentions from the latest survey.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
So official statistics tell us how many children people actually have,
and in the Hilda survey, we're asking people how many
children they would like to have. So that is what
we call fertility intentions. And what we see is that
the trend in fertility intention mirrors the actual fertility rate,
so that the desired fertility has also gone down over
(02:40):
the last twenty years or so. So still having two
children is what most people would like to have. That's
slightly less than half.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Of men and women.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
But we do see that people the prevalence of people
who would like three or more children has actually declined significantly.
And on the other hand, we now have a greater
share of people who would just like one child or
no children at all. So these two groups together now
make up around one quarter of men and women.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
What are the different factors impacting people's decision on whether
to have a child or not? Is cost of living
one of them?
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Yeah, there's actually two big group of factors that people
consider when having children, and one is the emotional side
of having children, the emotional benefits like having someone to love,
and the other one is costs and concerns and challenges
associated with having children, and we do see that these
two factors go in quite opposite directions over time. When
(03:47):
we ask potential parents about how important they think they are,
we see that the emotional benefits of having children they
have actually slightly declined in importance over time. But on
the other hand, the costs and challenges issociated with having children,
that's something that has become more and more important in
the minds of potential parents. So the major concern seems
(04:08):
to be the general cost of having children, and that
seems to feed well into the social and economic trends
that we have here in Australia, and especially one important
one is the rise in the cost of housing, both
in terms of renting and in terms of mortgage repayment.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
And young people who are thinking.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
About starting a family, they will often still be in
the phase where they have to save up money for
a down payment and they would have to think about
getting a bigger place, because families usually cannot do with
the one or two bedroom apartments that are found in
many cities. The other factor that we see in the
report is that childcare costs. Expenses for childcare have increased
(04:54):
quite considerably over the time that we've been interviewing people
over the past twenty years or so, and this is
another factor that looms very large in the minds of
people because usually both parents would like to be employed.
If you don't have grandparents in the background who can
take care of the children, you're relying on other types
(05:17):
of childcare, and so these costs are often very expensive
to parents and they're also quite expensive in Australia in
international comparison.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Young Australians or people of that age where they're thinking
about maybe starting a family. Is the feedback that they
are having to choose between where they live, how they live,
what their housing looks like, and starting a family.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
I think it means that if you want cheaper housing,
if you want affordable housing, you will have to move
towards the outskirts of the city or into regional areas. However,
many of the jobs are concentrated in the cities, so
that would result of and in relatively long commutes. We
(06:02):
do see that fathers are among the groups who have
the longest commutes overall.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
The report also mentions this concept called intensive parenting as
a bit of a more contemporary trend in parenting style.
What is this term? What does it mean?
Speaker 4 (06:19):
But that is a norm that parents are expected to
spend as much money and time and energy as possible
into the development of their children and put their children's
needs above everything else. This really sets the bar quite
high for parenting and parenthood and I would think that
(06:39):
it keeps some people from deciding for children to begin with,
and the people who do, but they want to be
this intensive parent, they will end up having relatively small
families because only this is when you can concentrate all
your time and money on very few children.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
And yeah, the survey also looks at overall attitudes towards marriage,
parenting relationships. Is there a link between shifts in those
attitudes and fertility trends?
Speaker 4 (07:13):
We do see that people who have more Eganitarian attitudes
they tend to desire smaller families. I can imagine that
if you like to divide work and family equally between
the couple, that's still quite challenging, and that becomes also
more difficult if you have many children.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
How do young Australians feel about marriage? How has that
attitude kind of shifted over time?
Speaker 5 (07:43):
So we see that people still disagree with the statement
that marriage is an outdated institution, so they still see
value in it, but it's no longer a.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
Thought of necessary as a life time commitment no matter what.
So if the relationship struggles for some reason, then separating
has become more acceptable, even if there are children.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
The latest findings tell us that the proportion of people
in psychological distress has trended upwards since twenty thirteen. The
prevalence of distress among young people in particular has risen substantially.
You've looked into the role of friendships as a significant
source of joy in people's lives. What can you tell
(08:32):
me about the relationship between friendships and wellbeing.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
Indeed, friendships are a very important source of social connection.
It provides us with emotional support, so we're having somebody
to talk to combat tied in, but also provides practical support.
We have somebody we can call for help. And we
do see that there is a connection between people feeling
that they don't have many friends and people feeling lonely
(09:00):
and being more prone to poor mental health. On the
other hand, the people who feel that they have many friends,
they are less likely to feel lonely and less likely
to be in poor mental health. So clearly having friends
is a protective factor against mental health problems.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
But on the other hand, the.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
Causality can also go the other way, in that people
who already have mental health problems will also find it
harder to maintain social relationships.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Obviously, you know this survey has been running over many decades,
during which time our daily lives have shifted to incorporate
social media. Does social media play a role in our
interpersonal connections and friendships?
Speaker 4 (09:45):
What we do see is that agreement with the statement
I seem to have a lot of friends with what
we call the perceived number of friends that has declined
considerably over time. And the interesting thing is that the
COVID nineteen pandemic is one major factor here. We see
big declines here which are easy to explain through lockdowns
(10:07):
and social distancing measures. Socializing has definitely taken a huge
hit during the pandemic, and what is interesting is is
that it hasn't really recovered very much afterwards. So apparently
people are now used to staying more in home and
interacting with people on a digital basis, or maybe not
(10:29):
at all, But really this has started much earlier, so
since twenty ten, we see the perceived number of friends
decline and we think that social media could be one
of the driving forces here and that people and especially
young people who are also very much affected by this
decline in friendships. They spend more time online and it's
(10:52):
easier to build connections there. But apparently these connections do
not have the same death as people you meet in
real life and interact face to face with on a
regular basis.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
There are, obviously, you know, significant concern areas, and sometimes
when we go through this data it can feel a
little bit bleak. But what about the more hopeful findings.
Is there cause for optimism? What sort of stands out
to you as telling a more positive story from the
latest data set.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
That would be a totally different area. But personally, I
do a lot of work on working from home and
commuting times, and this one good news that we can
get from the report is that commuting times have stayed
quite low since the pandemic.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
They were very much on.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
The rise before and we had very long commutes, especially
in the major cities in Australia up until twenty nineteen,
and that all changed with the pandemic with many people
changing into working from home. Our data only reaches until
twenty twenty three, but what we can see until this
point is that because working from home has remained quite
(12:03):
prevalent in the labor market, so have commuting times also
remained relatively low. And I think that is a good
news for people because we know that long commutes are
very bad for people's health as well.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
There can be a major stressor.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
And on the other hand it's also good for infrastructure
and traffic congestion and so on.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
What are your predictions for the next year, five years,
or ten years of Hillder survey data. Are there any
key areas that we should be paying attention to or there.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Will be so many interesting topics coming up. Probably you
never know what comes up. I think this digital age
will mean that we will look a lot into a
use of social media, for example, but also we have
new topics like online bullying that will be in later
(12:59):
editions of the report. I think also the topic of
our mental health will be one that will be important
and economic well being and that will be an important
for in your future as well.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Fascinating stuff. Thank you so much for joining us on
the podcast today.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Thank you so much to doctor inger Las and Emma
for that interview taking us through the latest findings. That's
all we've got for you for today's episode. We're going
to be back with the headlines a little later on.
Until then, have a great start to the week. My
name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung
(13:37):
Calcottin woman from Gadigol country.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on
the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to
all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay
our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both
past and present.
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