New Report Calls for Sweeping Pro-Family Reforms as Australia’s Birth Rate Hits Record Low

New Report Calls for Sweeping Pro-Family Reforms as Australia’s Birth Rate Hits Record Low

 

NEWS: Australia’s birth rate hits another record low Fertility falls to ~1.48 in 2025 — 2nd straight record low since 1924 • Projected to drop further to ~1.42 • Far below the 2.1 replacement level Australia is now nowhere near replacement level. This is exactly the decline

has been warning about for years.

Australia‘s fertility rate dropped from 3.45 to 1.64 in 65 years. Young Aussies still want 2 to 2.5 kids. So why won’t any government actually fix this? Because they can’t. Not without blowing up the economy they built on top of the problem. Australia‘s housing stock is valued at 4.17 times GDP. In the US it’s 1.6 times. Over half of Australian household wealth sits in residential property. The entire national balance sheet is a real estate portfolio dressed up as an economy. 66% of households own their home. 35% are carrying a mortgage. The average new mortgage nationally just hit $736,000. Repayments now consume 45% of median household income, up from 28% in 2021. These mortgages are only serviceable on two incomes. Every woman who leaves the workforce to have a child removes a taxpayer, a consumer, and half of a mortgage repayment from the system simultaneously. One decision, three hits to GDP. So instead of solving the birth rate, governments solved the spreadsheet. Aggressive childcare subsidies don’t exist to help families. They exist to get the second income back into the economy as fast as possible. The policy isn’t pro-child. It’s pro-dual-income. Then immigration fills the population gap the birth rate left behind. 500,000+ arrivals a year keep demand high, property values climbing, and the growth numbers looking healthy on paper. The housing shortage isn’t a failure. It’s load-bearing. Property directly contributes 11.5% of GDP. When you include indirect activity, it’s close to 30%. It employs 1.1 million people directly. No government is going to let that deflate for a birth rate target. This is the trap. Australians took out mortgages only two incomes can service, on assets only scarcity keeps valuable, in a system only immigration keeps growing. Any policy that genuinely supports larger families threatens the value of every home in the country. The birth rate didn’t collapse because Australians stopped wanting kids. It collapsed because the economic model needs them not to have them.

Australia’s Birth Rate Hits Record Low

With Australia’s fertility rate at 1.48 and falling, a new policy report from the Page Research Centre calls for sweeping reforms to childcare, tax, housing and migration.

Australia’s fertility rate has fallen to 1.48 — and is projected to drop further — as a new policy report calls on government to treat family formation as a national priority demanding major structural reform.

Raising the Next Generation, released in February by the Page Research Centre, argues that Australia’s institutions have drifted out of alignment with the realities of family life.

The 54-page report, authored by Virginia Tapscott and Gerard Holland, proposes a coordinated reform agenda spanning five domains: early childhood, the motherhood penalty, cost of living, housing and migration.

“Families now feel that they lack the choice to pursue family life in the way they think will deliver the best outcomes for them and their children,” the report states.

Parental Choice Over Institutional Care

At the centre of the report’s early childhood agenda is a proposed Choice in Care Subsidy which would serve as a replacement for the existing childcare-only subsidy. The proposed scheme would be payable for parental care, kinship care, home-based arrangements and other alternative arrangements for children aged zero to three. The report argues the current system structurally privileges one mode of care over all others.

Government subsidies for institutional childcare are projected to reach $16.2 billion per year by 2026, while parental and home-based care receive almost no equivalent support. “The current system does not give families real choice,” the report concludes.

On the question of child mental health, the report’s findings are stark: at least one in seven Australian children now has a diagnosable mental health disorder. Anxiety diagnoses have doubled among adolescents over the past decade, and suicide is now the leading cause of death among 15–19-year-olds.

The report connects these trends to rising stress exposure in infancy and reduced access to stable, consistent care.

Addressing the Motherhood Penalty

The report documents what it calls the “motherhood penalty” — the high economic price women pay for having children.

Treasury analysis cited in the report finds women with children work about one-third fewer hours and earn around 55% less in the first five years after having a child. Even a decade later, mothers’ earnings remain roughly 40% below pre-child levels. A typical 25-year-old Australian woman who becomes a mother is projected to earn about $2 million less over her lifetime than a man who becomes a father.

The report proposes wiping 25% of a mother’s outstanding HECS-HELP debt per child on birth, and a child-linked income tax reduction of 25% per dependent child until the child turns 16. An ATO-administered superannuation credit for caregiving periods would address the retirement savings gap.

“Tax and retirement systems treat families as atomised individuals, not caregiving units,” the report argues.

It also calls for a child-centric framework that includes default flexible work arrangements, enforceable part-time rights, father-inclusive leave, and funded re-skilling pathways for parents returning to work.

Housing and the Cost of Family Life

The report identifies housing affordability as a serious constraint on family formation.

Australia’s median dwelling now exceeds eight times median household income — up from around five times two decades ago. Only around 36% of Australians under 35 own their own home, down from over 60% in the late 1980s. It now takes young people until their mid-thirties to purchase their first home, compared to the mid-twenties a generation ago.

The report calls for a review of tax settings that amplify speculative demand, with the aim of redirecting capital toward new housing supply. For older Australians, it proposes targeted downsizing incentives — a temporary exemption from the Age Pension assets test for downsizers, and stamp duty credits on the purchase of a smaller principal residence.

A proposed Building Australia Fund, meanwhile, would allow downsizers to invest released equity into government-backed infrastructure without incurring capital gains penalties.

Migration Reform

The report confronts migration policy directly, arguing that high migrant inflows have served as a quick fix that’s failing to address the underlying drivers of low fertility.

Net overseas migration averaged around 370,000 per year from 2022 to 2025 — more than four times the pre-2005 baseline. Housing supply, however, has not kept pace. Only 177,000 new dwellings were completed in 2024 against estimated demand of closer to 223,000.

“Migration can complement national growth, but it cannot substitute for family formation,” the report states. It calls for staged reductions to the permanent migration program, a phasedown of international student enrolments, tighter enforcement of temporary visa work conditions, and restricting skilled lists to true shortages in health, trades and engineering.

A Coherent System

Australia’s fertility rate fell to 1.48 in 2024 — well below the replacement rate of 2.1 required for long-term population stability — and is forecast to fall further to 1.42 in 2025–26.

The report argues the fertility decline is not primarily cultural but structural: “When caregiving is financially penalised, time with children is economically unaffordable, and the conditions for family life are unstable, individuals adapt by delaying or limiting childbearing.”

The report draws on international experience — particularly Hungary’s pro-family strategy, which coincided with a 24% rise in fertility and a 50% fall in abortion rates between 2010 and 2024, alongside sharp increases in marriage — as evidence that policy can ultimately shift behaviour.

The report’s full policy summary calls for 18 specific measures across its five reform areas.

“By supporting families to form earlier, raise children with stability, and maintain long-term economic security,” it argues, “this agenda strengthens the foundations of productivity, social cohesion and national resilience.”

“It positions family life as it should be — a shared national priority worthy of deliberate, structural support.”

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Australia’s Birth Rate Hits Record Low