In boom times, good things come in threes: [1 All-round Country Edition]
John Stapleton, Leticia Makin. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 17 Nov 2005: 5.
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Abstract
Liberal backbencher Malcolm Turnbull said a strong economy had been fundamental to the turnaround. “The best guarantee that families have and the best encouragement to have children is a strong economy,” Mr Turnbull said yesterday at a Sydney conference on demography and generational change.
Mr Turnbull, weighing into another policy area favoured by Treasurer Peter Costello, said an ageing, dwindling workforce created a significant and expensive social problem for the nation’s fewer and fewer workers.
The Northern Territory was the most fertile state with 2.24 births per woman, while the Australian Capital Territory was the most unproductive with only 1.64, well below the replacement birthrate of 2.1.
Full Text
NOT since the end of the post-war baby boom in the mid-1960s have Australia’s thirtysomething women been so fertile.
New figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal the nation’s overall fertility rate rose slightly last year from 1.75 babies per woman to 1.77 on theback of a big increase in births to older women.
Women are waiting longer to have children, with births for 20- to 29-year-old women continuing to decline. The average age for women giving birth to their first child rose to 30.6 years while the median age of first-time fathers rose to 32.8 years.
Last year, 254,200 births were registered in Australia, an increase of 3100 on the previous year and the highest in a decade.
Liberal backbencher Malcolm Turnbull said a strong economy had been fundamental to the turnaround. “The best guarantee that families have and the best encouragement to have children is a strong economy,” Mr Turnbull said yesterday at a Sydney conference on demography and generational change.
“The turnaround in fertility is (because of) a combination of sustained economic growth, which gives people confidence to have children, and the Howard Government’s very focused family-friendly policies,” he said.
“Children are a social good. We all have a vested interest in each other’s children.”
Mr Turnbull, weighing into another policy area favoured by Treasurer Peter Costello, said an ageing, dwindling workforce created a significant and expensive social problem for the nation’s fewer and fewer workers.
The Northern Territory was the most fertile state with 2.24 births per woman, while the Australian Capital Territory was the most unproductive with only 1.64, well below the replacement birthrate of 2.1.
ABS demographer Joanna Forster-Jones said the Government’s $3000 baby bonus, which rises to $4000 next year, had yet to be reflected in the statistics.
Sydney mother Penny Pitcairn said that for her friends, three children had recently become a more common number as their financial situation improved.
“I was a reluctant mother, but I gave myself six months to have a baby and ended up loving my first pregnancy and then thinking I could do that two or three more times and afford to do it quickly,” Ms Pitcairn said.
The mother of three credits the decision to have children late to the independence she had earned as a career public servant.
“My financial independence keeps me going back to work and I wouldn’t want to lose it. It is something that is very important for women these days and it allows me to juggle motherhood and a career better than if I had been younger,” she said.