Australia

Yeah, fuck that. We need society that isn't dependant on the next generation inheriting a ponzi scheme. Also faaaaaaar too many people have children, and I'm convinced most didn't actually think it through beforehand.

The media: the world is going to end, covid, expensive housing, war, climate change, death, destruction, doom.

Also the media: Australians are having fewer kids, mystery deepens.

Not an Australian but I bet good money it is the exact same reason as everywhere else in the west: people have no time, no money, no social services, and really bad future perspectives with the ecosystem going to shit and capitalism running the world into the ground.

People need time to raise kids, people need money to afford kids, kids need education and attention. Provide those things, and provide a not-bleak perspective for the future, and people will be happy to have kids again.

It’s fucking gross when you treat babies as some good you can run out of and by extension I guess the people that give birth to them

Get knocked up for the economy! Create workers!

If you have enough money to afford housing, food, education for a large family, then lucky you — you can pay for your own IVF.

I’ve paid taxes for over 40 years, and I’m quite happy to fund Medicare, welfare, roads, things that benefit everyone. I don’t want my taxes paying for other people to fulfill their selfish desires, particularly when the future looks so bleak — climate change, housing, wages, to name a few.

Aren’t there enough people in the world already?!!?!?

Government financed IVF will not solve the birth decline, nor will a plethora of government carrots and incentives for short term fixes. Because Australia has a long tradition with immigration I don't see low birth rates as a dire problem, it is bad news for older homogenous societies like Russia, China and Japan. What will be necessary though is a shift in our composition of tax policies and handouts. Much more tax collections will have to come from non personal income.

Maybe I'm weird, and I am open to that as a possibility, but I don't see low birthrates as a problem. I feel like the human race could actually benefit from a reduced population. If the population was to reduce by half or more because people did not want to procreate and did so voluntarily and of their own free will, many of our climate change issues would be reduced and might even reverse without changing anything else.

Unless and until the human population gets down to two billion or less, there is little to no danger of a non-man made disaster wiping us out.

Maybe if the cost of living is addressed than people would be more likely to want more kids.

No.

Perhaps it's unfair to people who want to have kids but can't that IVF is so expensive, but really, there's one thing that affects birth rate more than anything else: cost of housing with decent nearby amenities, infrastructure etc. If housing were cheaper, people would have more kids... Simple.

So if you want to solve the social equity problem, subsidize IVF. If you want the birth rate to increase, knock down the barriers to entry and high costs in the housing market.

I'm likely infertile, and no thanks. I'm having enough trouble existing and being employed with long covid on top of pre-existing medical issues for which i have long run out of medical options, certainly all that are available under Medicare. Maybe I would sort of want children if I weren't struggling to just eat, work and sleep? Or maybe the bleak future of humanity would still be enough to convince me not to condemn another person to it.

Falling birth rates might be a little more than just an IVF cost issue. Perhaps we should look into that instead of slapping on a subsidy bandaid and hoping it cures the symptoms.

I'm late to this conversation but I've gone 5 rounds of IVF and it's cost us most of our savings. IVF didn't work for us and we're looking at egg donors. Did you know it's illegal to pay someone or receive money for being a surrogate or egg donor? We're having to look overseas because hardly anyone here will do it for free (understandably).

Clearly, the government isn't interested in anything remotely related to female health.

You just gotta go outside and do the baby dance similar to how one would call a rain storm.

I look forward to seeing how this plan helps the indigenous peoples.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Dr Davies said the country was already testing using artificial intelligence (AI) bots and services in the support workspace, in preparation for an increasingly elderly population.

"There are already a lot of tech companies developing in that space ... AI robots and services to check up on people's health and wellbeing, remind you to take your pills, have a chat to it to keep your mental faculties going," she said.

Dr Davies said for migration levels to stay the same in Australia — about 220,000 people per annum — the country was going to have to learn to compete on an international stage to attract migrants.

The current generation of Australians in their 20s were born under Mr Costello's baby bonus policy, where their parents were given tax incentives to have children.

Dr Davies said this combination of factors, along with the current cost of living and housing crisis, meant she could not see Australia's fertility rate change any time soon unless the government acts now.

"Australia needs to continue to improve its work and family policies such as the provision of affordable childcare, but more for the well-being of mothers than to increase the fertility rate," he said.

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