Media Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

25 August 2026

Australia cannot outsource its demographic future as global fertility falls

For the first time in recorded history, the human population is no longer replacing itself.

New research from the University of Pennsylvania finds that global fertility has most likely fallen below replacement level during 2026, decades earlier than United Nations projections assumed.

Pronatalism Australia says the finding removes a key assumption of Australian population planning, that there will always be young people born elsewhere who are willing and able to move here.

Founder Andrew Glover said the logic holding Australia’s population policy together no longer works.

“Every migrant that moves to Australia has to be born somewhere. When fertility is falling almost everywhere, and faster than many demographers expected, that cannot be our long-term demographic strategy.”

Australia’s total fertility rate fell to 1.48 births per woman in 2024, around 30 per cent below the replacement level of approximately 2.1. Net overseas migration contributed around 73 per cent of total growth in the year 2025.

Some of the most drastic recent falls in fertility have been in middle income countries, defying expectations that they will supply the world’s young workers, and Australia’s, for decades to come.

“Many poorer countries invest significantly in the upbringing, schooling, and training of their people, then Australia recruits them at the moment they become productive adults. The ethics of that arrangement are harder to defend when those countries’ fertility rates are falling faster than ours and will need those workers themselves,” Mr Glover said.

“Many countries have recently learnt of the vulnerability created by outsourcing too much of their industrial capacity, and we have been doing the demographic equivalent. A country that cannot reproduce itself becomes dependent on the reproductive capacity of other countries, and the new global figures tell us that capacity is shrinking quickly.”

“Migration can complement a healthy Australian population. But it cannot be a permanent substitute for Australians being able to form families and have children,” Mr Glover said.

Pronatalism Australia says Australia should treat the restoration of fertility towards replacement level as a core national objective, and should set about removing the economic, housing, workplace and cultural barriers that stop Australians having the families they truly want.

“Australia should do its part to respond to global fertility decline. We should aim to produce and raise future generations rather than assuming indefinitely that other nations will do it for us,” Mr Glover said.

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Media Contact

Andrew Glover, Founder, Pronatalism Australia
Email: info@pronatalismaustralia.org
Web: www.pronatalismaustralia.org

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15 August 2026

Census creates decade-long gap in family size data as fertility rate hits record low

Pronatalism Australia has called on the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Government to restore the Census question on the number of children a woman has ever given birth to, and keep it on a five-yearly cycle. The question was not asked at the 2026 Census on 11 August this year. Last collected in 2021, it will not be collected again until 2031.

The ABS accepted during its topic review this year that “there is a data need”, but judged the case for collecting it every Census weaker than for other topics.

Founder Andrew Glover disagrees.

“A ten-year cycle for this question made sense when fertility was higher and moved slowly. It is much harder to justify a ten-year gap when the fertility rate has dropped to its lowest level on record and continues to fall”.

Pronatalism Australia points to the ABS’s own forecasting record that underestimated the rate of fertility decline the country has experienced recently. The lowest of three scenarios in its 2018 population projections assumed fertility would settle at 1.65 babies per woman by 2027. Australia was already below that in 2024, at 1.48.

“Australia’s fertility rate has dropped much faster than the ABS thought it could. This demonstrates the need for high quality data on this issue that only the Census provides”, Mr Glover said.

“We do not just need to know how many babies were born last year. We need to understand who is managing to form the family they want, who is not, and what circumstances go with having fewer children than hoped for.”

Birth registrations produce the annual fertility rate, a snapshot of one year with little detail. The Census records how many children women have actually had so far in their lives, alongside age, location, education, income, employment, housing and migration. It also lets researchers see how the same birth cohorts look at successive Censuses, showing how much delayed childbearing is impacting fertility statistics.

Pronatalism Australia wants a commitment to collecting the topic in 2031 and every five years afterwards.

“When the demographic picture changes this fast, our priorities need to change with it,” Mr Glover said.

“Whatever else Australia chooses to count, how many children Australians actually have should be measured at every Census. We cannot hope to turn around declining fertility if we only choose to collect our best data once a decade.”

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Media Contact

Andrew Glover, Founder, Pronatalism Australia
Email: info@pronatalismaustralia.org
Web: www.pronatalismaustralia.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

7 July 2026

Pronatalism Australia Calls for Family Formation Literacy in Australian Schools

Pronatalism Australia is calling on state and federal education authorities to introduce Family Formation Literacy into Australian secondary schools, giving young people structured preparation for parenthood and family life alongside the prevention-focused sexual health education they already receive. In a new discussion paper released today, the organisation argues that schools prepare students for almost every domain of adult life except one of the most consequential: becoming a parent.

The paper describes a longstanding asymmetry in the curriculum. Where reproduction is taught, it is framed overwhelmingly through prevention, covering contraception, sexually transmitted infections and consent. What students rarely encounter is any structured account of what family life involves, why it matters, or how to prepare for it. Founder Andrew Glover said the imbalance was difficult to defend at a time of falling birth rates.

“As our birth rate falls, we increasingly hope that young people will go on to start families of their own. Yet we spend far more effort teaching them how to avoid becoming parents than preparing them for how to become one,” Mr Glover said. “We seem to expect young people to simply absorb the reasons for having a family, without ever equipping them for it.”

The discussion paper proposes embedding family formation content into existing subjects rather than creating a new one. It recommends teaching the realities and rewards of raising children within health education, evidence-based fertility literacy covering age-related decline and the limits of assisted reproduction, and life-course planning within careers education that considers children and caregiving alongside study, work and housing. The paper notes that Singapore, Japan and Finland already teach elements of family and caregiving competence in their schools.

“Many Australians underestimate how early fertility begins to decline, and by the time they find out their options have often narrowed,” Mr Glover said. “Students deserve an accurate picture of their own biology, and an honest sense of the deep and lasting rewards of family life, which for most parents far outweigh its demands.”

Pronatalism Australia stresses that the proposal is non-coercive, politically neutral and respectful of those who choose not to have children. The organisation has released the paper for public consultation and is inviting responses from educators, parents and policymakers on how schools might better prepare young people for caregiving and family life.

“A society should not be surprised when family formation weakens if it prepares young people for almost everything except that,” Mr Glover said.

Pronatalism Australia’s full discussion paper, Family Formation Literacy, is available at pronatalismaustralia.org/policy-papers/family-formation-literacy.

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Media Contact

Andrew Glover, Founder, Pronatalism Australia
Email: info@pronatalismaustralia.org
Web: www.pronatalismaustralia.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

22 June 2026

Pronatalism Australia Calls for Clarity from One Nation on Family Policy

Pronatalism Australia has called on Pauline Hanson and One Nation to clarify their position on family policy, following Senator Hanson’s National Press Club address in which she questioned the case for paid parental leave.

Founder Andrew Glover said the speech raised concerns about parental leave but also praised One Nation tax policies that could materially help families.

“If Australia is serious about lifting its birth rate, we should stop treating the work of raising children as economically invisible. Paid parental leave is an important part of our demographic infrastructure, not just a workplace perk.” Mr Glover said.

During the Press Club Q&A, Senator Hanson questioned why business should pay employees who are not at work. Pronatalism Australia said this misreads both the value of early parenthood and the design of Australia’s government-funded scheme.

“Supporting childbearing means reducing the accumulated costs of parenthood, not adding to them. Any rollback of paid parental leave would push us in the wrong direction,” Mr Glover said.

On tax policy, Pronatalism Australia commended One Nation’s proposal for household income splitting, which would allow couples with a dependent child to combine and divide their income for tax purposes. The organisation described it as one of the more family-friendly structural reforms in Australian politics, easing the penalty on single-income families and reducing the need for delayed childbearing.

“Income splitting recognises the family as an economic unit and removes a real disadvantage faced by parents who choose to care for their own children. That approach deserves cross-party support,” Mr Glover said.

Pronatalism Australia, which takes no partisan position, said the coming period offered One Nation an opportunity to set out a consistent pro-family agenda rather than a mixed set of signals.

“We will commend good family policy wherever it comes from, and question it wherever it falls short. What prospective Australian families need now is clarity.”

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Media Contact

Andrew Glover, Founder, Pronatalism Australia
Email: info@pronatalismaustralia.org.au
Web: [www.pronatalismaustralia.org.au](https://www.pronatalismaustralia.org.au)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

18 June 2026

Pronatalism Australia Calls for “Babyannuation” Scheme to Support Future Families

Pronatalism Australia is calling on the Australian Government to explore a long-term fertility investment model, described as “Babyannuation”, that would help young Australians build the financial security needed to start families and begin reversing the nation’s deepening demographic decline.

The proposal reflects growing international interest in investment-based approaches to family policy. In Finland, where the fertility rate has fallen to 1.25 births per woman, the Family Federation of Finland has proposed a Baby Fund that would invest €5,000 on behalf of every child at birth and release the matured sum only when that person has a child of their own. Pronatalism Australia says Australia should consider a similar approach as part of a broader, long-term strategy to restore replacement-level fertility.

Founder Andrew Glover said current and past family policies remained too short-term and fragmented to address the scale of the challenge.

“Australia has spent decades treating fertility decline as a private lifestyle issue, when it is in fact a long-term structural challenge with national implications,” Mr Glover said. “If we are serious about reversing it, we need policies designed to endure, not temporary incentives that disappear after the next election.”

The concept draws on the same logic as Australia’s superannuation system. Under a Babyannuation model, a government contribution made at birth would be invested over time and only accessed later when that person starts a family. Unlike a one-off baby bonus, the initial investment would grow over decades through compounding returns, producing a far larger pool of support by the time a person reaches family-forming age.

“Superannuation recognises that people will one day reach a stage of life where their earning capacity declines and they need support. Family formation works in a similar way,” Mr Glover said. “Just as superannuation turns small contributions into meaningful retirement savings, Babyannuation could turn a modest investment at birth into more substantial support for starting a family.”

Mr Glover said other countries were increasingly recognising that demographic decline required long-range thinking rather than temporary fixes. Pronatalism Australia is calling for a national conversation on innovative fertility policy development.

“Superannuation helps Australians prepare for retirement. Babyannuation would help Australians prepare for family formation,” Mr Glover said.

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Media Contact

Andrew Glover, Founder, Pronatalism Australia
Email: info@pronatalismaustralia.org
Web: [www.pronatalismaustralia.org](https://www.pronatalismaustralia.org)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

3 June 2026

Australia Has Added Another Million People — But Its Demographic Deficit Deepens

Australia’s population has reached 28 million people, according to new Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates. But beneath the headline milestone lies a growing demographic deficit: Australia is experiencing record-low fertility while relying increasingly on migration for population growth.

At the current fertility rate of 1.48 births per woman, each generation of Australians is producing around 30 per cent fewer children than needed for replacement. Because these effects compound over time, today’s fertility rate means the generations of children born to Australians will become drastically smaller over the decades ahead — particularly if it declines even further.

Andrew Glover, founder of Pronatalism Australia, said the latest figures demonstrate why headline population growth should not be confused with demographic renewal.

“Australia has added another million people, but our demographic deficit continues to deepen,” Mr Glover said.

“Many Australians would be surprised to learn that we are now producing only around 70% of the children needed for long-term replacement. That represents a significant erosion in generational renewal occurring beneath the surface of continued population growth.”

ABS figures released earlier this year showed that net overseas migration accounted for 73% of Australia’s population growth, while natural increase accounted for just 27%.

“Migration can increase a country’s population size, but it does not address the underlying reasons Australians are having fewer children,” Mr Glover said.

“For too long, population growth has allowed us to avoid a more difficult conversation about fertility decline, delayed family formation, housing affordability, economic insecurity and the broader conditions facing young families.”

Pronatalism Australia is calling for greater public awareness of fertility decline and a renewed focus on the cultural, economic and social factors that influence family formation.

“Population growth tells us whether Australia is getting bigger. Fertility tells us whether Australia is replacing itself,” Mr Glover said.

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Media Contact

Andrew Glover, Founder, Pronatalism Australia
Email: info@pronatalismaustralia.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

2 June 2026

Pronatalism Australia Welcomes 26 Weeks Paid Parental Leave

Pronatalism Australia has welcomed the full implementation of Australia’s expanded Paid Parental Leave scheme, which now provides eligible families with up to 26 weeks of leave, including superannuation contributions.

Founder Andrew Glover said the reform represents a positive investment in Australian families and the nation’s future.

“Giving parents more time with their newborn children reduces financial pressure and allows families to focus on what matters most during the earliest months of life,” Mr Glover said.

Pronatalism Australia noted that the inclusion of superannuation contributions is particularly significant, recognising that time spent raising children contributes to society and should not come at the expense of retirement savings.

“The inclusion of superannuation is an important recognition that caring for children creates value not just for families, but for society as a whole,” Mr Glover said.

Pronatalism Australia noted that the benefits of parental leave extend beyond workforce participation and economic outcomes.

“Strong attachment between parents and children during infancy is associated with a range of positive developmental outcomes,” Mr Glover said.

“Policies that support parents to spend time with their young children should be viewed as an investment in Australia’s future wellbeing.”

While welcoming the reform, Pronatalism Australia said further action would be needed to address Australia’s declining fertility rate and make family formation easier and more desirable for future generations.

“This is a step in the right direction,” Mr Glover said.

“Building a more family-friendly Australia will require a broader conversation about the economic, cultural and institutional barriers that prevent many Australians from having the families they truly want.”

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Media Contact

Andrew Glover, Founder, Pronatalism Australia
Email: info@pronatalismaustralia.org
Web: [www.pronatalismaustralia.org](https://www.pronatalismaustralia.org)