FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
22 September 2026
Pronatalism Australia has called for raising the fertility rate to be made a national priority, and for major policy to be assessed for its effect on family formation, after Monday’s Intergenerational Report projected for the first time that deaths will outnumber births from the 2060s.
Founder Andrew Glover said fertility could no longer be treated as a background assumption.
“We assess major policy for its economic effects and its environmental effects, but we don’t assess it for whether it makes having children harder or easier,” Mr Glover said. “Policies like stamp duty, student debt repayment thresholds and the mix of apartment sizes a council approves are all fertility policy in effect, but nobody making those decisions is ever asked to see them that way.”
The organisation proposes adding Fertility Impact Assessments to the policy development process, so that significant proposals disclose their likely impact on family formation before reaching Cabinet.
Australia’s total fertility rate has fallen from 2.02 children per woman in 2008 to a record low of 1.48 in 2024. The report projects a further fall to 1.34 by 2065–66.
“We have gone from two children per woman to under one and a half in just sixteen years, and the fall is projected to continue,” Mr Glover said. “Migration will keep the population growing on paper, but creating the conditions for Australians to have children of their own should now be a core priority for the nation.”
The Intergenerational Report attributes the decline to longer education and later career establishment, young adults remaining in the family home for longer, and the postponement of partnership and childbearing.
“Australians are having to make the decision to have children later and later, or not at all, which means we aren’t replacing ourselves as a nation,” Mr Glover said. “But fertility decline isn’t inevitable. We can change course and support the creation of the next generation.”
Much of the political debate since the report’s release has turned on single instruments, with the return of a baby bonus and the further expansion of childcare each put forward as the answer.
“A baby bonus and subsidised childcare can be part of the response to fertility decline, but neither of them is a comprehensive strategy. Treasury has given us forty years of warning, but the moment to act is now,” Mr Glover said.
Media Contact
Andrew Glover, Founder, Pronatalism Australia
Email: info@pronatalismaustralia.org
Web: www.pronatalismaustralia.org