The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) yesterday released data on Australian births, which revealed that the fertility rate has fallen to decade lows just as the average age of new mothers has hit an all-time high.
According to the ABS, the average number of babies Australian women are having fell to 1.80 in 2014, down from the 2013 total fertility rate (TFR) of 1.88 babies per woman in 2013, and the lowest level recorded since 2004 when it was 1.78 (see next chart).
The decline in the TFR has occurred across all states and territories, except the ACT (see next chart).
Fertility rates decreased across all age groups in 2014, except women aged 45-49 years, which registered a small rise. Fertility rates remained highest for women aged 30-34 years, recording 120 babies per 1,000 women, down from 125 babies per 1,000 women in 2014 (see next chart).
Women in inner city areas typically have the lowest fertility, whereas the “baby boom” areas are all outside the main centres (see below charts).
Meanwhile, the median age of mothers in Australia hit a record high 30.9 years in 2014, whereas it was 33.0 years for men, fractionally below the record high 33.1 years of age recorded in 2010 (see next chart).
Finally, after strong growth between 2003 and 2008, the number of births registered in Australia dipped to 299,697 in 2014, the lowest level recorded since 2007 (see next chart).
So, while the Federal Government continues to run a ponzi-style immigration policy, Australians are voting with their tummies for a “smaller Australia”.
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This is amazing data… check out Sydney – gosh the Northern Train-line with the lilac colour, where all the big established schools are is a worry. The inner city purple is not surprising, young hipsters and gay/ homosexual (not sure what term to use). Purple patch below Cronulla is mostly National Park and doesn’t count! The conjunction of purple Strathfield (?) and highly growth oriented Auburn virtually next door!!!! Won’t go there…
Isn’t that bizarre, it seems in Sydney at least, if your house is worth over $2m dollars, you don’t have kids! That is a worry for the country that some of the best and brightest think having two Porches more important than having two kids (or three to replace the population)! Materialism gone bloody rampant….
Great stuff, very interesting – and highly worrying all at the same time. This is stuff Governments really need to look at. If we don’t get this right, and encourage fertility rates, we will assign ourselves to an economic skills trap – whereby we will continually have to import unskilled peoples, and wait a generation for their kids to make a “net” economic impact!
I know UE will hate this, but Howard thought critical and shaped his whole vision of what he wanted Australia to look like. This is a big worry though…
Howard was a Class A hypocrite.
While blowing the family values trumpet he and Costello were working hard to ensure to create a economic model antagonistic to family / household formation and reproduction. That the ALP did almost nothing of substance to change course – “I am an economic conservative” is noted.
^This.
Howard portrayed himself as the champion of 50s family values but deliberately created a housing bubble and system of “Howard handouts” that did more to ensure Mum’s have no choice but to return to work and dump their kids in pricey childcare “industry”.
Howard was a pathetic little hypocrite. There are few politicians I despise of as much.
this is the contradiction at the heart of modern conservatism:
that conservative family values are completely at odds with the neo-liberal economic model.
Exactly.
Want to start a family? Cool, just don’t mind that employment is a going to be a lot less stable and the cost of housing will cripple you. There won’t be a lot of quality family time because you’ll both be working long hours to cover the mortgage and your travel time will eat into much of your day.
For those with more than 1 kids, you literally have to be a multi-millionaire to buy a property with 3 bedroom those ‘purple’ suburbs, so many will move to somewhere more affordable.
John Howard may have the right intention, but his policy did the exact opposite. By making housing expensive, you’re forcing the family to have 2 incomes, which is a big reason for the drop in fertility rate.
Doesn’t mathematically make sense given our birth rate has not exceeded replacement rate.
Don’t confuse rising debt bubble and asset price inflation – with Howards families policies, which were bang on the money, but take decades to implement, and hence had no effect (see fertility rates).
And this is a critical point, although not strictly mathematically true if you play with the numbers (and I have). Europe has had falling fertility rates for four decades, possibly more. I remember a big demographer pointing out it will be double that time to fix the problem (its actually less). But in that same void you have an explosion of population growth in Northern Africa. trust me when I say, Europe today, will not be the Europe you know in 70 years… cultures that have survived for centuries will have started to disappear.
And this is the natural course of things – I am not saying its bad. It is what it is… even the might Roman Empire had its day.
There seems to be some correlation between birth rates and unemployment rates – http://www.sbs.com.au/news/map/labour-markets . Wonder what’s going on there?
[couldn’t edit] Doesn’t mathematically make sense given our birth rate has not exceeded replacement rate.
Don’t confuse rising debt bubble and asset price inflation – with Howards family policies, which were bang on the money, but take decades to implement, and hence had no effect (see fertility rates).
And this is a critical point, although not strictly mathematically true if you play with the numbers (and I have), Europe has had falling fertility rates for more four decades. I remember a big demographer pointing out it that to fix a demographic turn around it roughly takes double the decline time to restore baseline again (its actually less). Using black death data in Germany with cultivation estimates (its all v. interesting. Did you know it took hundreds of years for some parts of Germany to be cultivated again, that huge tracts of farm land turned to massive forests? Simply because the death rate was so high)
But in that same void you have an explosion of population growth in Northern Africa. Trust me when I say, Europe today, will not be the Europe you know in 70 years… cultures that have survived for centuries will have started to disappear.
And this is the natural course of things – I am not saying its bad thing. It is what it is… even the might Roman Empire had its day.
I bet the new migrant areas are booming though. I know Truganina is leading the way in Melbourne. These cultures couldn’t care less about the property boom. They’re not averse to all shacking up together, pumping out the kids and raking in the welfare cash. How’s Lakemba and surrounds looking?
Northern Africa’s TFR of 3.0 actually gives it pretty limited scope to flood Europe with people, especially when China (already) and the US (given the persistent decline in births in Mexico, where live births peaked in 1994) start looking to Africa to keep their populations from shrinking.
While the costs of banging out three kids can’t be denied, it doesn’t change the fact that the birth rate has been below 2.0 since about 1980, so much as Howard et al have cocked things up in the last 20 years, how do you explain the 15 before that?
Researchtime,
The final nail in the coffin of the Roman Empire, the one that eventually caused it to collapse (well the Western portion anyway), was a massive flow of Germanic refugees across the Rhine and Danube Rivers around 406AD. This flow of Germanic refugees were pushed by the Hun and it is believed that the Hun were paid to do this by the very wealthy Romans who by this time had safely nestled themselves in the new city of Constantinople. The Germanic refugees became the Visigoths, Ostrogoths and the Vandals who all failed to integrate into the Roman Empire and eventually all took there turn to sack the ancient city of Roman over the following two hundred years. The ancient city of Roman was well over a million people at the beginning of the 5th Century AD, when the Germanic refugees were initially pushed into the Roman Empire by the Hun, but by the end of the 6th century AD it is believed to have been reduced to a city of no more than 30,000 people.
Lesson, never trust a wealthy Roman(ancient)…
Its even more complicated that that… historical context, is important. Where did the Goths, Visigoths and various other Germanic peoples come from originally, (we think) from the Russian steps, pushed out by the Slavs! That is the whole reason why Germany was enamoured by the late 19th concept of Lebensraum. Actual plans were drawn up during WW1, later policy later adopted by the Nazi’s for widespread Slav pogrom/displacement for Russia, with replacement by a more superior race (i.e. themselves); and was the major reason why Germany launched the Eastern Front without securing the Western.
From the German perspective, they just want to take their lands back, and is the main reason why the EU is encroaching upon the Ukraine today. Germans still have this deep desire to go back, and will do what ever its takes to get it back. Its all deep psychology kind of stuff, and very nasty will be the inevitable consequences. War will come again, but not in our life times… touch wood.
There is nothing wrong with a low birth rate. Let our population shrink by choice, because otherwise we’ll face a die-off in the decades to come (energy shortages, climate change, financial collapse). 😯
Old people can work much longer. There is nothing stopping people working their entire lives. Many oldies hate retirement.
Relativism would never allow our population to shrink – we would be taken over long before that. Seriously R2M – you reasoning operates in a vacuum. You have no idea about cause and effect…
I should have said Caucasian and pre-existing Australian population. Of course I’m expecting the gross population to grow, what with all the climate refugees eventually headed here.
While a natural decrease in population will make Australia (and the world) more sustainable, Australian culture will struggle to exists when the majority of occupants did not grow up here, and that will be a terrible thing.
Nothing wrong with the declining birth rate on its own.
It is an indication of something else that is very wrong.
@ Ronin
“Australian culture will struggle to exists when the majority of occupants did not grow up here, and that will be a terrible thing”
Why terrible?
Australian culture was once annihilated by the people that were not born here and who never integrated whilst actively destroying existing Australian culture.
Oh, wait, you think that Australian culture began with first anglo settlers?
/sarc
Anglo Australian culture – Bradman worship, ANZAC and bush mythologising, and all the rest- made it through post WWII immigration and waves of Asian immigration since the ’70s intact. It’ll survive just fine – like a cockroach after nuclear war.
The idea of ‘A Fair Go’ remains the bedrock of Australian culture.You will be surprised at how this is not the case for other cultures, and how our government wants to replace it with neo-liberalism.
Anglo culture is why the following waves of immigrants come here.
None of them are participating in corroborees or eulogise about the dream time.
Thanks to 15-20 years of Australian politics built around rewarding the established boomer cohort at the expense of the youth, a very large proportion of folk under 30 in this nation can barely afford to put a roof over their head within >30km of a capital city job…. KIDS? dream ON !!!!
The unrelenting/untouchable/sacred Boomer entitlement to draw down $60Billion annually for aged pensions, much of which is paid without genuinely testing eligibility, is going to keep this nation’s budget in a downward indebted cycle for decades to come…. same story with the intergenerational theft that has been superannuation concessions that have benefited the same cohort for the last few decades….
Shame there is no sign of things changing any time soon.
The RBA and APRA have been working hard for almost 20 years fulfilling the mission given them by the LNP and post 1996 ALP to create an economic environment as antagonistic as possible to “relaxed and comfortable” reproduction.
It is a credit to the power of biological urges that anyone still does it.
With 2 nippers under 5 an extra wage needed for shelter and cost of living its hardly surprising.
We would love another “for straya ” but gets a lot more $$$$.
Another cost of the housing bubble and financialisation.
This is true…
I’m one of those older parents…..
I wouldnt speak for the rest but one thing I would note in my circumstance is that the older you are the less you think about your kids being Australian simply for the sake of being Australian (and my ancestors took part in WWs 1&2, the Gold Rush and have been on the land here for generations) and start thinking about their world, where their opportunities will be best, and how the Australian economy of now and the likely economy of the future fits into providing them with their best opportunity.
At the moment I see my homeland providing a wonderful childhood play experience, a native level English speaking ability………..but from there it is ordinary secondary education, expensive tertiary education, leading to an economy hollowed out like no other and seeing them with careers in aged care, accounting or public service and being taxed into the bargain to pay for entitlements for those older than them which they wont get. I do often ask myself if it is in their interests to remain in Australia and generally conclude that it is an ideal place to have the right to come back to, but that if they want to do anything self actualising in this world then it is certainly not the place to be tied to.
Don’t give up yet Gun… this is a great country, and the future is bright. But maybe not for everyone. I am seeing a lot of postings about who’s to blame for this housing crash, and the truth is we all are. We all borrowed and begged and effectively stole from the future to feed the present. This is a normal action, 99.9% of us would do it again if we had our time again…
I am Gen X and I worry about my personal future – I think we could easily have a lost decade – and trust me when I say, if Europe is any guide fertility rates will drop like a stone. But we are young, and the beaches here are brilliant… this is a good country, and has a great future for our kids.
Germany, Italy, Portugal, etc. are toast… Russia (by some estimates) will lose a third of its population by 2050… but even if is not that bad, it will be bad. By some estimates, there will be more moslem children born in Holland than Dutch in 13 years. Jump 30 to 40 years that has a big impact on what Holland will become, since the Moors were kicked out in Spain 300 years ago.
the world is changing – and Australia looks great… take a longer view. Maybe we won’t be personally as successful as we would have liked, given what we are about to endure, but believe that our kids future will be. You have to stay positive, and take a macro view on things. After all, isn’t that the reason why we have kids in the first place?
RT,
I completely agree with you re causes for optimism and Australia’s future. This phase of reductionist and facile economics will pass and we will learn from the experience and return economics to its rightful place as the servant of the national interest rather than an end in itself.
I am surprised that it hasn’t happened already (optimists are like that) but every day that passes the ability of policy makers to ignore the need to change the economic and monetary model is diminished.
There are many people of good will who know that something is rotten in the state of Denmark but they are only just starting to understand what it is. That knowledge is spreading day by day.
So well put RT
Panglossian view, and coming from a climate denier who is routinely wrong on every issue, this is not reassuring.
Much more likely is that Australia will dry out (see climate change map for a “moderate” scenario for 2050) and heat up, effectively constricting us to the edges of the continent even further, depopulating WA (which will be come very dry), and restricting food supply and exports.
In addition, we’ll face an overwhelming influx of climate refugees, as has already started in Europe (Syria is suffering severe drought and water problems).
Tourism will fall away with increasing fuel prices due to supply constriction and more especially carbon taxes. So say goodbye to that boondoggle.
Most Aussie cities will be hot, dry places that flood suddenly and unpredictably. Unemployment will be very high, and many more people will be living at a subsistence level, growing food in their yards or on allotments in community gardens.
Already working on building your Pursuit Special R2M?
Love one, but in the future I probably won’t be able to afford the fuel. In fact, fossil fuels could become precious “unobtainium” given the inevitable supply decline (peak oil has not gone away, despite the current glut) and harsh anti-CO2 measures sure to come.
“since the Moors were kicked out in Spain 300 years ago.”
close, I think the general consensus is that they were kicked out by 1492.
The Moops. It’s the Moops.
@RT – absolute BULLSHIT !
this big brown land is fucking ruined and the young should flee and let immigrants be the only option left for the Boomer government to raise revenue to pay Australia’s present and every-expanding future Boomer entitlements and hospital bills.
What a legacy!! #straya
Guys. Kids born today will never get out of kindergarten. Technology and robots will be doing all the work
(what Tesltra announces another 400 layoffs today)
In 10 years time you wont recognise the place.
Offshore will be no different.
I’m with you there Gunna. I have a very clear global perspective wrt the skills my kids need to have to succeed in tomorrow-land but I’m equally clueless wrt Australia. For me Australia seems to be set on a course that’ll put the good ship SS Australia up on the rocks…I cant decide if the intention is to beach a listing ship or is the wheel house simply vacant…seriously does someone simply need to pry the wheelhouse door open and set any sensible course?…..to be honest it’s a mystery. My Aussie family roots also go back to the mid 1800’s so it genuinely pains me to see this great nation without a clear set direction and without a clear narrative on how we’ll all sail into bright and beautiful future.
Unfortunately even trying to raise one of these issues at a Sydney BBQ will get you banned for life, maybe they’ll be kind enough to clue you in before they kick you out….In my case they clued me in…the futures in residential housing (no not building them) just owning existing houses…..the really worrying thing is that it seems like they were right…..leaving me even more clueless than I started out….honestly how the @#$% did that become the national goal?…shakes head and mixes stiff drink…
Your reference to what people think at BBQs is instructive. The problem with Australia is not top down. It’s an ‘I’m alright Jack ” attitude combined with a mammoth sense of self entitlement, a dedication to wilful ignorance, a lack of care for the next generation, and the dirty little brain bug that makes Australians think high house prices are good.
Basically it’s a fat lazy stupid self entitled future eating population, and the only thing that will penetrate the wall of smug self satisfaction and entitlement that most (especially older) Australians have in spades is widespread pain. And you’ll get it too; the nation’s decision to concentrate wealth by jacking costs through the roof while killing all trade exposed sectors in order to support the housing bubble will see to that.
In the meantime, you’re sailing into a depression. After its over, Australians might learn something, but I doubt it – it’s a lazy nation stuck in its ways, and probably with too many oldies with their hands in the till to change. I reckon you’ll just become another ‘Southern Country’ like Argentina.
Hopefully I’m wrong and Australians have the capacity to learn, but if the last decade has taught me anything, it’s that Australians can be counted on to take the easiest, dumbest, most instantly gratifying route possible in all things. Enjoy the great decline, peeps; God knows the people of Australia deserve it.
Quite bang-on there Dudley
Gunna, I’m in a similar position. Just a question of a) when to make the move, and b) the best place to move to. Our family is bilingual and becoming trilingual so portability looks attractive.
2015 Australia is the finished product of the market reform period which started in 1983.
Decaying infrastructure, disengaged electorate, excessive household debt, low skill economy, out of control banks, growing inequality, small government, low taxes. Private affluence, public squalor. This is the El Dorado that the Canberra press gallery told the public they wanted.
SW. you are right. This was the ploy back in 83 to stop industrial unrest, and to give the public scope to realise their dream of following the wealthy,credit restrictions were cancelled and in fact money was give to the punters. The public took to it like a Labrador to a puddle, and ran up massive borrowings, in poor investments such as housing. Housing supply was manipulated to hold its value and so the ponzi.
the shale ouk will be when housing not only falls in value due to unemployment casing an inability to pay the debt, but as housing maintenance charges, rates, maintenance kick in.
the initial plan was to subdue the punters by allowing the punters to overindulge, (but the advance of technology and the diminishing value of labour was not considered) and now the excesses and inability to skirt technology is going to sink the joint.
Even being offshore will not assist you bailing rats, as the issue is global, and once you have left, you may not be able to return. Some 457 will be in your workspace.
People have been sold a pup. The end result of all this reform/swindle has been to tie up avg. peoples wealth in one of the worst returning assets available.
How nice we’ve forced all the families out to the boondocks where there’s no infrastructure. Great family policies from the Howard/Costello train wreck…
AJ Google is currently launching a network of communication balloons so all are connected to the internet and can work from home. Now that all,, is all globally. So anybody,, from anywhere, can do your job.
Telstra has shown where company and share holder compassion lies. Aussie jobs to go to the Phiilipines.
Got any kids ww? Hospitals, schools, family, sport…
26 THOUSAND bankers overboard, sounds like a good start.
Deutsche Bank AG said it will shrink the lender’s workforce by about 26,000 people by 2018 as co-chief executive officer John Cryan seeks to improve returns.
They need to roll Costello out again. Go on, have NONE for Mike Smith, NONE for Glen Stevens and ONE for your country…….
And the biggest cause of all of this across the Developed World is…… the contraceptive pill. It arrive circa 1960 and have look at the top graph. Choice, and a whole new order of personal responsibility ( or lack thereof!) hit a generation unprepared for something the world had never seen. The option to choose infertility.
Isn’t it amazing what happens when you give people control over their own bodies without fear of being ostracised or stoned to death.
Yep. The other big drop in the early ’70s would be legalised (well, decriminalised) abortion and no-fault divorce laws.
All wonderful victories of rational thought that represent the shift underway in the developed world toward scientific, harm based morality.
+1
I think youth culture was just as important and the shift of wealth towards the young also helped a lot. This gave teenagers and young adults the ability to make their own decisions, decisions that were in their own interests. Contraception or family planning is important, but culture is also just as important (and perhaps even more important).
More specifically, the female youth. The accelerating liberation of women over the same period played no small part in decreasing fertility rates.
Just wait for the impact of the male contraceptive pill?!
Can’t imagine being anything more than negligible. No woman would trust a man to take it.
Haha maybe so but I was thinking more a case of AND rather than OR for couples.
Unaffordable housing… The ultimate contraceptive.
The maps are interesting in that they show where the advanced and the developing – I mean, human resources rich – regions are.
Regrettably those numbers tie to demographics D. Poor education, drugs etc
And we are producing more poorly educated / drugged ones than worthy educated / sane ones…..
Oh I know!! That is why we need more and more educated immigrants and 457s!!
IDIOCRACY finally being realized.
Love it 😀
It would be interesting to overlay median household incomes onto this map as well.
My guess is wealthier == fewer children, consistently, at both the macro and micro level.
That’s what I was getting at when I made comments above regarding the maps. You can see a mini-world map in each of them.
Wealth tends to be positively correlated with higher education. And the higher a woman’s education, the fewer the number of children she typically bears.
House first, kids second. I can’t afford a basic home so no kids. Meanwhile the bogan single mother next door pumps a kid out every few years to a different father so she doesn’t have to go back to work and give up her houso flat. Not looking good for Australia.
Its the reverse Darwin…
The process of unnatural selection
awesome
They’re not voting for a smaller Australia by not breeding. They just realize that the costs vs benefits of kids just isn’t worth it personally.
Those who can make that sort of calculations stopped breeding. Those who cannot keep breeding like rabbits!!
Guess where this leads to……
Eugenics?
LOL!!!
the developed world has created this mess by breaking down the family structure ( read Joint family) and has been done intentionally by the the top 0.1 % to achieve their goal to keep debt machine alive and going
@ Dumpling re education (lack of, poor quality, computers etc) & drugs (illegal, OTC & prescription) resulting in gormless, ignorant, arrogant, selfish, self-centered, tired & often stupid citizens. Personally I’m astounded when I see a child sucking (teething) on an iphone or worse staring at the screen listening to inane sound of an ‘education game’ while the ‘carers’ suck on a latte staring blankly at their own screen -angry birds/macrobusiness. Our society is currently engaged in collective insanity. The child grows anti social, missing connection as do its peers who were also suckled & nurtured through devices. They land in school aged 5 if they’re lucky enough not to have subjected to childcare, craving connection & have no idea how to because they have not be shown (modelled) how to socialise, they act out, get medicated for ADHD or some other syndrome/behaviour, at the same time this is happening to their parent & their peers. Everyone is under financial pressure; parents (mortgaged or renting) educators (mortgaged or renting) health workers (mortgaged or renting) even those arrogant w*&kers in realestae & finance are under pressure. Working in allied health I see daily the impact on health & wellbeing where people are convinced they have defective brain or mental health issue. We are conditioned to medicate every feeling, reaction we have around normal daily challenge, for eg work issues, parenting, housework, driving, etc) Positive impact of medication not withstanding many once capable individuals are rendered incapable of caring for self or family. I’d love to see a graph somehow correlating drug use & prescription medication with housing, stock market &gambling demographics. I’m ranting but sometimes I yearn for the demise of the mobile phone & internet calamity & return to books, newspaper & face to face conversation.
I hear you, billygoat. Yes, the Dark Side is everywhere. Those selected few, the wise, can see through it all.
Financial pressures can be highly damaging – both health wise and that it can distort one’s thinking. It is hard enough to remain open-minded and uncluttered without any financial pressures. One has no chance if under financial pressures.
“where people are convinced they have defective brain or mental health issue”
If they still retain that sort of sense, aren’t they still relatively sane?
BG Correct and for many it is the end game.
I tell you what, these Chinese I see walking around here dont have any of those afflictions.
They must feel like the Spaniards in Inca land. Just too easy for em.
Who would want to bring kids into a world of sanitised soccer, supervised bike rides, stranger danger, ipad time, weekend homework, hyper competitive classmates ?
Growing up as a child in Melbourne in the 70s was, in hindsight, some kind of wonderland. Weekend mornings comprised a quick breakfast in front of the cartoons, out of the door by 7am, and then a long day of playing and mischief with neighbours on the streets and adjoining suburbs, snaffling lunch at some other kids house or scrounging enough cash to buy a bag of chips and deep fried dim sims, tram rides into town, sneaking into Princes Park to watch Jesaulenko run rings around Richmond, and back home before dark to the parents, entirely oblivious to what their 9 and 11 year old kids had been up to for the day.
It almost seem like another planet. Today my parents would be subject to citizens arrest by a social worker.
What rational person brings more children into a world of declining disposable real income, mounting housing debt, increasing job insecurity, dismantling of the social safety net, dismantling of public funding for education and health ?
The blame lies with the neoliberal agenda.
The neoliberal agenda has sucked this life dry of meaning, has sucked the joy of this world from our children, has rendered us into unfeeling, risk averse, selfish materialists.
There is a very barren future for all as long as the neoliberal agenda prevails.
G Me too. we had forts and canoes, boats, down by a river with crocodiles.
The dog couldnt wait for us to get home from school. We only came home when it was dark or we were hungry, or to wash the mud off the dog.
It’s interesting that you mention the lack of freedom children have today.
My kids loved growing up in China because as white kids they were absolutely a protected species, they could do whatever they wanted and noone would intervene, you see the Shanghai police made it known that you dont mess with Laowai’s (white guys) and whatever you do DONT mess with their kids. So my kids traveled all over one of the largest cities in the world getting into all manner of mischief but always were home by dark. I didn’t know the half of it…which is as it should be. They’d go to the most expensive Villa’s and swim in their pool the guards were clueless as to what to do so they’d pretend that they didn’t see the kids walk past. occasionally they’d prod the youngest to go over and try to use broken English to figure out who they were and why they were there but he’d get told to go away (not quite so politely) and the guards just didn’t know what to do.
When we moved to Australia they hated all the restrictions, they couldn’t move around on their own, they couldn’t buy beer at the corner store, so couldn’t get the all latest movies for $0.50 from a street vendor, they couldn’t buy street food (my eldest still craves for those western Chinese lamb kebabs from the street vendor) for them everything in Australia was so restrictive and pointlessly so.
The one thing they really hated was not being able to even enjoy a Bicycle ride without some jumped up nazi telling them to wear a helmet, heck they had a class ride where all the kids needed to have knee-protectors as well as helmets…somehow the joy of the riding experience was lost.
CB it is your upbringing which teaches you the limit of your reach. Kids which are allowed discover that limit themselves and that of their friends always do better than the closeted cotton wool kids in a neighborhood.Today the youth are coddled and what do we have, a useless generation. (how about the caning the apprentices copped here the other day)
I have a file around entitled,”Get Yourself a Trucking Education”, by Bryce Courtenay on the doings of Lindsay Fox, I’ll try and find it for the weekend.
Your kids sound like little shits to be honest
Probably true Coming, but isn’t being a little shit also a big part of being a kid?
Seems to me this is just a part of the way that we define our place in society. My kids weren’t necessarily alone they’d be with a group friends sometimes one of the group even lived at the compounds they’d visit….but telling the guard that wasn’t much fun for a 12 years old trying to develop their own understanding of the world.
but isn’t being a little shit also a big part of being a kid?
Not an intrinsic or inevitable part, no.
One kid, three dogs. Recipe for happiness.
Perhaps the fewer kids part of the equation is the growing realisation that lots of kids, three or more, does not equate to greater happiness.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2014/10/ChildrenAndHappiness.aspx
Thanks for the link 3d1k.
In it I note it says:
Those who have children at an older age or who are more educated have a particularly positive response to a first birth. Older parents, between the ages of 35 – 49, have the strongest happiness gains around the time of birth and stay at a higher level of happiness after becoming parents.
Bodes well for the increasing median age of first time parents. Clearly the wait/ patience is worth it!
Prime time for women to have kids is 18-25, biologically speaking, crappy that the median age keeps rising. It’s just the western way these days, in the pursuit of materialism, narcissistic ideals and economic gain above all else. Get a good education > to get a good job > to get rid of “good education” debt then eventually give up and have kids then rent hahah oh I forgot to throw in there the entitled/obligatory travel spree before settling down
Go girl, you can have it all! No sacrifices required.
The Four Rules for Predicting Behaviour of the Modern Entitled Woman.
Rule #1: Everything I want, I believe I deserve.
Rule #2: What’s the least amount of effort I can expend to get what I believe I deserve as quickly as possible?
Rule #3: If the quickest and laziest route to achieving what I believe I deserve would require serious moral or social transgressions, then those rules don’t apply to me, because of how righteously-deserving I am.
Rule #4: If I am stigmatised for any moral or social transgressions in the righteous pursuit of what I believe I deserve, then what is the least amount of effort I can expend to defuse criticism, deflect blame or escape punishment?
Rule #4 is how women consistently-lower the bar of any civilization.
If enough female listeners can empathize with the justification for transgression by imagining being in her position, the transgression becomes destigmatised.
Women don’t really feel guilt the way men do – from my experience, they can emotionally-justify anything as being anyone’s fault but their own.
All, non-resilient female behaviour seems to follow this pattern.
Emotionally-resilient women are less predictable.
Prometheus, those 4 rules….
Sounds like the words on an Australian with a german heritage moniker…. identify unknown of course.
Sounds a bit like a really fat chick aborting a kid, or some chick making a movie about red pills.
Rusty; it was too good not to share.
I was indicating the source.
Found it on the way to the pet store?
As a single man with no kids, a mortgage, a modest salary and taxed to the hilt and with few if any government freebies, I can’t really afford to have any pets.
As far as the West goes, the plug got pulled years ago and now we are circling the drain, gaining speed at every cycle.
Also; single parent (usually mother) families has become somewhat of an unofficial Australian national sport/pastime.
No mention of that in these statistics.
LOL, Prometheus69. Thanks for sharing the 4 rules!!
Also; single parent (usually mother) families has become somewhat of an unofficial Australian national sport/pastime.
No mention of that in these statistics.
LOL. Statistics ?
You wouldn’t let actual data get in the way of a rant.
Great, great.
For my kids I’ve made sure they have two things: International Baccalaureate and EU passports. Maybe they will even stay here, unlikely but who knows
The social dynamics occurring plays a large part, feminism and ‘social progression’ is fast helping destroy the nuclear family. Ironically the so called liberation of woman is resulting in them becoming devalued at a rapid pace. Men of value in greater numbers are starting to reject marriage/family, its a have. To a man of any worth, marriage is a risky investment in a rapidly depreciating asset.
Young woman these days spend their 20’s burning through their youth/health/beauty/femininity and then what, I am supposed to scrape them off the sidewalk, commit to them in their late 20’s / early 30’s so that I get to experience their decline and ever increasing bitterness as the loss of their youth hits home? And as a man I still have to play by old school marriage rules.. thanks but I think ill continue dating girls a decade + younger.
You beat me to it.
The MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) movement is gaining pace.
I guess we should expect TFR to reach Japanese levels, then.
Seems a reasonable outcome of developing a hikikomori culture for Australia.
lmao good to see the redpill making an appearance on macrobusiness
LOL; the introduction of some Red Pill wisdom and Truth Talk to MacroBusiness has been a long time coming.
I’ve been waiting to see it referenced directly a number of times!
Why is it relevant on a blog that discusses essentially stuff certain subsets of men (e.g. bankers, political leaders) do to shaft other subsets of men (e.g. most working Joes) and some corresponding subsets of women?
The Red Pill is relevant to ALL spheres of life.
To be fair to both men and women, the situation we have ended up with regards to feminism/women/families was a neolib conjob to increase consumption and provide cheaper labour for corporations
Women are stupid to have fallen for it, but men are no smarter
Most men have an adoration and goodwill towards women.
They supplicated this thinking it would be a net benefit.
As you said, the end result was women sacrificing their best to be a cubicle slave for the corporation, offering up second best ovum’s for reproduction and internal agitation about hypocritical and conflicting behaviour.
All it took was the promise of more handbags and shoes, much like a shiny bauble entertains a cat.
Little is said about the behavioural effects that feminism has had on men.
As things are currently, women are FAR more likely to benefit from getting married and having a kid or two than a man.
If anything goes wrong, the man is to blame and male divorce rape of assets ensues.
Also; educated, professional women typically expect that their partners will earn more than they do.
Men are waking up to the scam that marriage has become and I expect that the fertility rate among educated, professional women will drop even further as the equivalent men no longer wish to play a game where all the odds are stacked against them.
Indeed. The more educated they are the smaller their dating pool becomes. Too many fail to understand we are attracted to different things. I am not necessarily repulsed by a woman’s education/career/status, I can respect it, but it holds little to no inherent attraction to me like mine does to most woman. And from a practical perspective a career driven woman is simply going to have less to offer me *shrug.
Equal opportunity not equal results.
I consider myself a feminist of sorts in that I expect equality, applied equally to all matters, not just when it suits women and feminism.
Of course this is wishful thinking on my behalf.
Great. Women can’t raise kids cause they have to work, pay off mega mortgages and child care. Then on top of that, everyone’s effort is taxed to the chin AND shackled to intergenerational unfunded debt, so we can pay immigrants on welfare to breed and continue soothing ourselves over how non-racist, tolerant and welcoming we all are. What a fantastic way to run a country into the ground! The West is finished
Oh no, perma.
Without a constant injection of educated and un-drugged immigrants, we will soon need to introduce eugenics. You know, so that those who are breeding like rabbits while on drugs and/or welfare and live in the fringes of Syd / Melb do not become the majority.
Don’t see how eugenics follows from what I wrote.
I don’t think new immigrants are entitled to welfare payments until they become citizens (so minimum of how many years? Perhaps 3?). By the time they become eligible, they have been well integrated into the local workforce so they won’t need welfare payments anyway.
No, most of the welfare payments go to those who were born and grew up in the disadvantaged sections of the society in this country. So, if you want to reduce your welfare bills, as your post suggests, you will need a measure to reduce the number of these people.
I’m curious to see data/figures on the proportion of immigrants taking welfare over time. Couldn’t find any for Australia on ABS site and google.
Eugenics is on the far end of the scale. The government’s already trialing welfare cash cards. Perhaps that’ll work, but as with any gov programme probably not. Other things are education, addiction centers and/or decriminalising drugs. But all probably too far out there to be popular with the Australian populace.
Anyway, if we broaden the definition of welfare to include any transfer. Then those going to NGers, CGT discount takers and superannuants should be the softest, mooshiest targets.
Ah, welfare cash cards!! Glad that you reminded me of that. The government should apply the scheme to all recipients without delay.
I recall there were outcries from the recipients when they were first introduced, something along the lines of why they were not allowed to spend their money on alcohol / petrol for sniffing / cigarettes, etc, before not enough would be left for the kids!! LOL, no wonder they were screwed.
I acknowledge that the factors underlying fertility/ fertility rates are multifaceted, but is it a good proxy for consumer confidence I wonder? Look at the run up in the fertility rate – went from 1.8 to 2 or so between 2004 and 2008-9, at the same time household incomes were rising due to mining boom mk I. I note that fertility rates then declined again after the GFC. Births in absolute figures plateaued after the GFC, jumped a bit around 2011-12 (mining investment boom mk II) and have since declined since 2013. So, if we credit people with having a bit of responsibility about these things (welfare recipients who are angling for extra benefits excepted, but then again, they are making rational decisions too: more kids = more money), then fertility is a bit of an indicator of confidence. & right now, re. the economic outlook, looks like consumers don’t think much of it!!
In the US it was observed at the county level that there was a strong correlation between how badly a county was effected by the GFC (measured by increase in unemployment I think) and TFR. That is, a significant majority of localities across the US experienced a decline in fertility as a result of the GFC, and those localities that had a worse GFC experience also had a bigger decline in fertility.
Interesting. Thanks Statsailor.
I have no doubt we can expect historically low TFRs going forward, thanks to the pill and changing societal values, but on the whole people still desire 1-2 children and it would be interesting to model how the state of the economy influences the TFR value (between 1 and 2) over time.
Fact is one of the most significant, and even more so in future, drivers of population growth is neither fertility nor ‘immigration’ (whether temp or permanent) but prosperity and longevity of our estimated resident population, i.e. ageing oldies.
Although MB tends to lose its objectivity regarding our supposed ‘population Ponzi’, it also ignore this elephant in the room blaming mostly temporary residents creating churnover for adding to our estimated resident population, but is it actually true?
Further, if one reverted to the pre 2006 definition of population, excluding non Oz citizens and PRs from the NOM, the impact of ageing population or contribution to population growth could be nearer 50%?
So while MB continues to highlight ‘immigration’, are there any ideas of contributions to how Australia can maintain its tax base and avoid increasing state debt to support health care, pensions etc., without utilising temporary residents?
Or will future Australia become a place where no one is not allowed to retire, even when suffering from dementia, cancer or heart disease; assuming health care personnel are available? Or should federal and state governments demand that (early) retired public servants under the age of say 67 years return to work? All school leavers will be allotted careers and study pathways that they must particpate in or be held legally liable? How should Oz deal with this supposed issue realistically vs simplistic?
It’s all very well to supposedly to identify ‘population’ problems, but how about practical or realistic solutions, not couched in antipathy (according to commenters) towards nominal groups of immigrants, property buyrs, students, moslems, refugees etc..
Keep working ? What do you think all those old people are going to be doing ? There’s not enough jobs to go around _now_.
Not sure if you understood? There are skill shortages in Australia, and these will become worse while we have an ageing population (not just leaving workforce, but requiring more healthcare), cannot give away visas for maths/science teachers which Australians won’t do, many occupations will change and although popular idea or notion, you cannot compare one job with another as though it’s a nicely balanced steady state system, when in fact you are comparing apples with oranges.
What do rugby prop forwards do after the age of 38? They’re no longer physically able to prop !!
There is no such thing as a shortage of valuable activity to perform. The problem is the distribution of the proceeds of said valuable service.
There are skill shortages in Australia […]
No, there’s not.
There’s a *work* shortage in Australia. A million+ un- and under-employed people.
On top of that, we are a generation – two at the outside – away from nearly everyone being made literally redundant by robots and AI.
There is no such thing as a shortage of valuable activity to perform. The problem is the distribution of the proceeds of said valuable service.
Yes ?
Ds,
Do you have data on the surplus of maths and science teachers?
AI has been one generation at the most from taking our jobs since the mid 50s
EDIT:
Also why would you go to the trouble and expense of replacing your workforce with robots with associated learning curve if there’s a massive surplus of labour? As I understood it japan has the most automated workplaces in the world driven by two decades of falling labour supply.
Do you have data on the surplus of maths and science teachers?
No, is someone trying to say we don’t have enough and nobody who can be trained ?
AI has been one generation at the most from taking our jobs since the mid 50s
What jobs relevant to most of the working class do you think can’t be done by a robot ? Checkout operator ? Shelf stacker Barista ? Shop assistant ? Brickie ? Taxi driver ?
Also why would you go to the trouble and expense of replacing your workforce with robots with associated learning curve if there’s a massive surplus of labour?
Because people are expensive and complain a lot ?
Wasn’t the contention that there are insufficient maths teachers what you were arguing against?
nobody who can be trained
Ideally a maths teacher would be a maths graduate. As a maths graduate married to a teacher it find it impossible imagine why any maths graduate becomes a teacher.
Coffee vending machines have obviously existed for about forty years but the barista seems unthreatened.
In the presence of a peristent surplus of labour people will not remain expensive.
They will probably continue to bitch and moan though.
Wasn’t the contention that there are insufficient maths teachers what you were arguing against?
Actually it was that there was a skills shortage.
I struggle to believe there are both a) insufficient maths teachers or b) people incapable of being trained to be maths teachers.
What you might have is insufficient pay to convince people to take up the mantle of maths teachers, or other things that might drive them away (eg: fear of being thought a child abuser for wanting to work with children).
Coffee vending machines have obviously existed for about forty years but the barista seems unthreatened.
We’ll see how many barista jobs remain once unemployment is measured in double figures and don’t have $5-20/day to spend on coffee.
In the presence of a peristent surplus of labour people will not remain expensive
Doesn’t mean they’ll be cheaper than a robot.
The rise of “bullshit jobs” and dodgy unemployment statistics are well documented on MB. They are symptoms of people not having real, productive work to do.
If a whole lot of baristas end up unemployed because people have less money to spend on rubbish that will have had nothing to do with AI.
Wrt maths teachers. There probably isn’t a shortage of five year olds who could be trained but there may be a shortage if school leavers- owing to self same maths teacher shortage.
Point always seemed to be at any rate that there can be shortages of specific skills even when there is a general shortage of labour.
Robots to do at least some of things you mentioned – checkout , make coffee- have existed for many years . Yet even with Australia’s high wages it remains cheaper and easier to get labour – even if it is from dodgy sources. I don’t buy that there is going to be a sudden drop in the price in robots in the near future such that labour prices are unable to fall quickly enough to keep pace.
If a whole lot of baristas end up unemployed because people have less money to spend on rubbish that will have had nothing to do with AI.
No, but robots being able to do their job nearly as well for substantially less will play a part.
There probably isn’t a shortage of five year olds who could be trained but there may be a shortage if school leavers- owing to self same maths teacher shortage.
Point always seemed to be at any rate that there can be shortages of specific skills even when there is a general shortage of labour.
Indeed. So, going back to my original point about the GENERAL state of employment in the future, what are all those old people who will need to keep working supposed to be doing ? Sure, a handful of them might be able to teach maths, or fill the small number of other niche roles actually suffering shortages, but the vast majority are not going to be able to find work, because there won’t be any jobs for them to do.
I don’t buy that there is going to be a sudden drop in the price in robots in the near future such that labour prices are unable to fall quickly enough to keep pace.
Robots are going to get much cheaper quite quickly. Within a decade I expect to see robots capable of building houses (basic houses on decent blocks) that cost under a hundred grand, probably well under.
To use a simple example, look at drones. Only a few years ago a decent drone (programmable flight paths, HD cameras, auto-levelling, trivial remote control, etc) was thousands of dollars, now they are hundreds.
Labor prices dropping quickly might happen. But it probably won’t, and even if it does they will probably drop so far that people will barely earn enough to survive.
People who can look at the astronomical improvement in technology over the last few decades and think it is somehow going to slow down or stop blow my mind.
Fair enough – I certainly don’t imagine that there is going to be a widespread phenomenon of adults post 30 who are not existing maths graduates retraining as maths teachers. A handful, yes, but it won’t change any aspect of employment.
For the other, all I’ve seen my life is the pace of technological change slowing, so it’s really easy to imagine it not speeding up to achieve your predictions.
If this:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/looming-shortage-in-maths-and-physics-as-male-teachers-age/story-fnihsrf2-1227257632165
is what’s being referred to, then it sounds like there’s 5-15 years before it’s a big problem.
Which suggests there’s plenty of time to fix it with a recruiting drive if the will is there (but there probably isn’t).
For the other, all I’ve seen my life is the pace of technological change slowing, so it’s really easy to imagine it not speeding up to achieve your predictions.
Crikey. I don’t even know how to respond to that.
My understanding is the problem is already here in victoria (re maths)
The recruiting drive needed starts in year ten so if if the shortage is 15 years away you only. have 8 years. If it’s five years away it’s already kind of too late.
People suffering advanced dementia and cancer will continue to work/ not work in the same proportion as now . Which I believe is the try for a little while where it is still possible but will often be defeated especially in the case of dementia where recovery is not possible and there is no particular reason to think recovery is going to be made possible any time soon.