Australia’s fertility rate has collapsed to its lowest level on record, forcing the country to rely more heavily on immigration to expand the population as parents increasingly choose to have children when they are older.

Data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday showed that the fertility rate fell to 1.48 births per woman: the lowest rate since records began in 1921, despite the 292,318 registered births in 2024 being an increase of 1.9 per cent on 2023.

Since 2019, fertility rates – the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime – have fallen sharply in every state and territory. In the ACT the rate has dropped to a nation-low of just 1.27, putting it among the lowest fertility rates in the world, while the number of recorded births in NSW fell

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