Plunging fertility rates and how to address them

ByMartyn Bradbury

Declining birth rates: NZ fertility drops in line with global trend

It was previously believed that 2.1 children per woman was the replacement level needed to sustain the global population, but it’s now thought that the rate is higher – at 2.7 kids per woman.

It’s grim reading for a Saturday morning. But when three-quarters of the world’s population lives in countries where lifetime fertility rates are below replacement levels – including Aotearoa where the fertility rate has dropped from 2.17 in 2010 to 1.56 per woman in 2023

At the centre of the Gender Pay Gap is the biological reality women carry the babies. If we as a liberal progressive society want to ensure everyone has equal agency, then surely recognising biological reality is a starting point?

Woke Identitarians refuse to accept biology is a determinant because they see being chained to any biological reality sets their movement back, so the focus is on you-go-girl-feminism-boss-babes-in-the-Boardroom (hashtag) because middle class educated women deserve more while making it an altruistic virtue signal!

By constantly pushing for bigger bonuses at the Boardroom level, this brand of gender equality is weighted towards those women who already have more but want what the boys get too.

Charming.

Women leaders sidelined at prominent corporate firms due to motherhood, says University of Auckland study

Women are struggling to remain in top jobs in some of New Zealand’s biggest companies and those firms are battling to retain them due to motherhood, a new studyreleased on Thursday shows. 

The study called for businesses to achieve gender balance at senior levels by developing a better understanding of motherhood. 

Instead of the ideology why not focus on the biology?

You want to lift the birth rate, do something meaningful about the cost!

The first 12months should be maternity leave – or paternity leave, either one, but one of the parents should be paid to stay home with the infant for its first year of life. Who else do you want to look after an infant other than the parent?

Meanwhile, ECE should be nationalised and made completely free for 2 year olds to 5 year olds while all after school care should be free.

Childcare costs fall unevenly and unfairly on women, so why not eliminate those costs altogether?

Playing the Gender Pay Gap Game even when implemented, doesn’t lead to the outcomes desired.  

If women having babies is stunting their pay careers, then subside the cost of having that kid with 12months maternity/paternity leave, Nationalise ECE and free after school care.

Also implement a 4 day working week for all state employees so that people’s quality of life is lifted rather than just wage growth.

The promise of Democracy is you can look in your kids face and know they will have a netter deal of it than you.

Allowing a parent to stay home with their kid for a year,  provide free early education care and free after school care would do more to live up to that promise than anything else.

All we need to do to fund this type of universal upgrade of the social infrastructure is tax the rich!

Nationals 3 biggest donors (Hart, Mowbray and Bolton) have a combined net worth of 15 billion!

The Bottom 50% of NZ has 23 billion.

The top 5% of NZers own roughly 50% of NZs wealth, while the bottom 50% of NZers own a miserable 5%!

IRD proved NZ Capitalism is rigged for the rich and Bernard Hickey calculates that if we had a basic capital gains tax in place over the last decade, we would have earned $200billion in tax revenue.

$200billion would have ensured our public infrastructure wouldn’t be in such an underfunded ruin right now!

You want to lift our population?

Dump the woke hate for biology, dump the punitive punishment of the right and push for Universal Left instead!

Subsidise the cost of raising the kids so parents can have the agency of re-entering the workforce without the enormous cost of day care!

Reset the Working For Families rules, dump the relationship rules and write off beneficiary debt alongside a 50 000 state home build plan that boosts the state housing stock to a level that robs the landlords of the desperation they use to manipulate rents!

600 000 needing food banks each month is a political choice.

$3.5b in beneficiary debt is a political choice.

20 000 on the state housing wait list is a political choice.

Hundreds of thousands of NZ children in poverty is a political choice.

Remember this Government are taking $2300 away from the disabled each year and pushing 13000 kids into poverty so they can fund a tax cut for their rich landlord mates!

This is all a political calculation and every Kiwi should be ashamed of it.

No wonder our child birth rate is plummeting!

 

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12 Comments

  1. Families need their own home and not to be paying the mortgage of a landlord. When my parents married (1960) they could afford a deposit with a government loan to purchase a house in Riccarton. The lack of TV or family planning explains why I have 3 brothers and 2 sisters but having that start in life was a huge boost to their wealth as successive governments followed policies that increased property prices compared to income rates. Now they want to rent dog-boxes at excessive rates to young people then they wonder why they are reluctant to have children.

  2. In the back of peoples’ minds is the fact that the planet cannot sustain the demands of the population we have, everywhere. We’re ok in NZ/AO for the time being, but we keep mopping up people from places that are struggling to provide for everyone.

    We want to look our grandchildren in the eye and be sure they will have as good a life as we’ve had, but there is doubt now and that stops people. The costs are only part of the problem.

    I agree that the right-wing agenda is putting people off. They see it in the short term as a saving, not providing everything for people to have children. As usual, they haven’t considered the long-term results.
    To be honest I think their grandchildren are being treated as they treat the rest of the population, without care for their future welfare. It’s just THEM who matter. Their own descendants don’t count to them. Greed is all pervasive.

    Maybe there was something to be said for the earth-mothers of the 70s who gave up careers and advancement for their children’s benefit.
    We’ve learnt now that every single person is considered an ergonomic unit and each of us must prepare for our own future and old age because depending on the state has become unsure. Winston told us that long ago.
    Very hard to do that when you have a lot of children to launch in life and are out of the workforce for decades. The right would say we peasants live too long. Once we’ve done our duty we should die and not soak up resources. Doesn’t apply to them of course. They deserve long, well fed lives.

  3. I haven’t seen that biology ideology features much for the generation who’s fertile now. Of the under 40s I know they really don’t give a crap. However the cost and lack of security (job, housing, etc) for those in their 20s 30s and even 40s does. How can they consider the children they often really want if they can’t get a full time job – and even that full time job has no guarantee it will be there in 3 years let alone 5. How about their home being at the whim of a landlord? If society wants more babies they are going to have to get serious about supporting their potential parents. And doing more for the environment won’t hurt either.

  4. We dont need mass breeding so falling rates are a good thing .How ever silly countries ,like NZ ,just continue to import people to make up the so called short fall .If our population fell to 4 million would that be so bad .Every one would have a home to live in and unemployment would not be an issue ,health care would be great again as would education .But the greedy few will not like that because that would mean less people to exploit .

  6. White supremacists will not like one little bit that Māori are having kids at replacement level. A very young population now heading for 20% of NZ population. Eradication and assimilation clearly failed!

    When I talk to my son’s millennial mates they don’t want to bring kids into the disappointing world of transient renting,
    Climate meltdown and capitalist pillaging.

    Māori and Pacific and some others have a more holistic community approach to such things and find a way despite obvious impediments.

    1. Lack of secure long-term housing is a major turn-off.
      Too many landlords and renters and not enough home owners.

      As you say TM ‘a disappointing world….Climate melt-down and capitalist pillaging’.
      Our grandchildren deserve better but at least they have us.

      Eradication and assimilation of Māori has indeed failed and in recent years we may have a certain ACT MP to thank for that. He’s galvanized a few into action, I hope. Good genes need to be passed on.

    2. You’re right TM. Not the same for all ethnicities. Not only Maori and PI
      A sense of community, no doubt also a sense of whakapapa, intergenerational continuity.

  7. Plunging fertility rates and how to address them
    By Martyn Bradbury

    To address plunging fertility/birth rates You missed the most obvious and immediatf fix – immigration.

    When a country has to import 14% of its workers, you know that country has a severe demographic problem.

    It’s a simple fix

    Let’s make it easier for the tens of thousands young men and women wokring for us to live here, let then bring their partners and let then raise their children here.

    The temporary work visa scheme is a scam designed to keep a large part of our productive workforce vulnerable to eploitation and abuse.

    These workers pay taxes, without them our caring facilities and public hospitals would fall apart. Not to mention our construction and transport industries.

    1. Then there’s the birth-rate of many immigrant groups. The aggregate numbers tell a story but seems to me falling birth rates are in large part demographic. Socio-economic factors aside some cultural groups see children as an investment in the future, not as an impediment. But then I’m not Gen X or Z and facing all the challenges associated rising job insecurity and rising costs.

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