Baby boom or bust? The Tasmanian perspective

Causes and consequences

KPMG Australia recently announced that “The baby recession [in Australia] continues as births drop to lowest level in almost two decades” and that “Tasmania was the only region to see a noticeable increase in births compared to 2019 with 5,850 up 2.1 per cent.”

Aside from the fact that the ABS advises in its 2022 Births publication that “Counts of births in 2022 in Tasmania were affected by a change in the way birth registrations were assigned to the reference year. This change resulted in a lower number of birth registrations than recorded in previous years, which has introduced a break in time series for birth statistics in Tasmania.”, I have not been able to replicate the KPMG analysis using official ABS birth data and population data.

In fact, my analysis finds that Tasmania’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has been below the national TFR since 2018 dropping from 1.68 to 1.49 over the 6 years and is now considered an ‘ultra-low fertility rate’. This means that each new generation is less than three-quarters the size of the preceding one. The consequences of ultra-low fertility rates are a rapidly ageing older population which presents substantial challenges from an economic, social and sustainability perspective.

This Insight provides further analysis of Tasmania’s births and fertility rates and discusses the causes and consequences for the State.

Note: this Insight should be read in conjunction with my Insight: To have a child or not? report which provides a more comprehensive overview of the causes of fertility decline in Australia.