Our total fertility rate sits between 1.55 and 1.60 births per woman. A decade ago it was still around 2. The fall is across every major ethnic group:
- European or Other: 1.56 (down from 1.92)
- Māori: 1.97 (down from 2.49)
- Pacific: 2.03 (down from 2.73)
- Asian: 1.32 (down from 1.69)
The mathematics is unforgiving. At a constant fertility rate of 1.56, each person born today will, on average, produce only 0.78 children. Compound that across two generations and the expected number of grandchildren per person falls to about 0.61. For a couple, that means roughly 1.22 grandchildren.
In practical terms, roughly 35–40 percent of people born today will have no grandchildren at all. Most who do become grandparents will have only one or two. The large extended family gathering of five, eight or ten grandchildren around a set of grandparents is becoming a statistical rarity. If fertility slips further toward 1.3 — entirely possible — the contraction accelerates.
This is not an abstract demographic curiosity. It is the quiet rewriting of New Zealand’s future. Fewer children today means fewer workers tomorrow, a heavier burden on a shrinking tax base, greater pressure on superannuation and health services, and a society that ages and contracts rather than grows and renews. Immigration can mask the numbers for a time, but it cannot permanently substitute for a native-born generation that fails to appear.
The causes are well known: later marriage, higher housing costs, dual-income necessity, cultural shifts that delay or discourage childbearing, and a welfare and tax system that often penalises larger families rather than supporting them. Yet the political response remains zero. We debate every secondary identity issue with intensity while the primary fact of national continuity is ignored.
A country that cannot replace itself has no long-term sovereignty. It becomes a temporary arrangement of individuals rather than a living society with a future. Demography is destiny. New Zealand is currently writing a destiny of fewer children, fewer grandchildren, and a steadily smaller stake in the generations to come. The numbers do not lie. The only question is whether we still have the will to change them.
Rodney Hide is a former Minister and leader of the ACT Party. This article was sourced from HERE.
6 comments:
The picture becomes even starker when we look at who is having the babies that are being produced - disproportionately a case of parasites breeding more parasites-to-be. What we need is more middle-class babies but it is the middle class that is most feeling the squeeze with regard to dual income necessity especially with regard to housing costs. As in Western Europe, a common sentiment is, "We'd like to have a couple of kids but can't afford it." See my still very topical article in Breaking Views of 2 January 2017 "Ode to the Methuselah generation."
International stats show income has little to do with it. ‘Kids get in the way of good times so why have any’ is more the reason than anything else.
" You must have kids to look after you in your old age" they said.
The reality is quite the opposite.
Then there's the caring parents who refuse to let their adult children leave home because it's such a big bad world out there and how would they possibly cope.
Is it not possible for a country to have future with a smaller population? What about the possibility that a country's wealth will not decline, but merely be concentrated in fewer people through inheritance? What's wrong with that?
Winston will solve the problem if NZF get back in Govt. $5000 per baby for three years (max three babies. Wonder which group will rush to have more babies? Will be the same low IQ parents who can't look after their kids now. Great plan Winston!
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