Wellington’s birth rate hits 30-year low

Saturday, 17 August 2024

More families like Lu Boss and Corey Burgess are having one or no children, as New Zealand faces a baby bust. Why? Finances, fertility issues, freedom, and why is it your business anyway?

With the cost of living rising, Katryn Kelly and Joseph Fleming had planned to save up for a few more years before having kids.

Then they fell pregnant with River ‒ their “happy little accident” .

Born in May 2023, their now-14-month-old son loves climbing and running.

“He’s a bucket of energy,” Kelly said.

But at playgrounds around the capital, including the one nearest his whānau’s home in Rānui, Porirua, the active wee boy may soon find there are few kids his age to play with, as the region is in a baby drought.

Katryn Kelly with her and partner Joseph Fleming’s “happy little accident”, River.

Data obtained by The Post from Statistics New Zealand shows fewer babies were born in greater Wellington last year than in at least three decades.

The national fertility rate has been below 2.1– the number of births per woman over the course of their life time, the level needed to maintain the population without immigration (often called “replacement level”) – for more than a decade, and is at a record low of 1.52.

In Wellington, the trend is even more pronounced.

In 2023, the number of live births in the capital fell by nearly 10%, from 5610 the year before to 5196. This was 1500 fewer pēpī than were born 15 years earlier, in 2008.

In fact, there were fewer babies born in Wellington City last year than in either Hamilton or Tauranga. That is despite Wellington having both a higher total population and higher proportion of women in their 20s and 30s.

Although the factors that are driving this phenomenon can’t be gleaned from statistics alone, looking at the data at a more granular level offers some potential clues as to why Wellingtonians are having fewer kids, or foregoing parenthood altogether.

When the 2023 data was broken down into suburbs of 5000 to 10,000 people , it showed that people living in areas where house prices were the highest were less likely to have babies.

Hover and click on the below interactive map to see how many babies were born in your suburb last year.

Just six infants were born in Seatoun, where a house will set you back around $1.7 million, compared with 180 in Tawa, where the average property costs half as much.

Wainuiomata had the most babies in the region, at 300. Trentham had half as many (150).

Whitby topped the list for Porirua, with 156 babies, and Cannons Creek was a close second, with 120. Rānui had 56.

Kelly said with families with young children under “insane” financial pressure, she understood why people would put off having children.

“Everyone I know who’s got a little one right now is not even making ends meet.”

Both she and Joseph work full time, as a public servant and social worker respectively, and have picked up weekend jobs to help with the bills.

The couple is considering relocating to Palmerston North, where Kelly’s parents own land, to set up a multigenerational homestead in order to “get off the hamster wheel”.

They’re pretty sure River will be their only child.

River was one of just under 5200 pēpī born in greater Wellington in 2023 ‒ 1500 fewer than 15 years ago. He’s a happy and active toddler.

And they’re by no means alone.

In response to a straw-poll conducted by The Post on the cost of early childhood education in April, several of around 70 Wellington parents said, unprompted, they would likely only have one child because of cost.

Katryn Kelly and her son, River, at home in Rānui, Porirua.

Rebekah Hennessey, Statistics New Zealand’s insights analyst for population estimates and projections, said cities often had lower relative fertility rates than less urbanised areas and studies had shown this was partly because there were more women in work and study in main centres.

During the Covid-19 pandemic birth rates dropped, then jumped slightly, before falling to “slightly lower but relatively normal” rates.

Affordability had almost certainly playing a role in the recent decline in births, Hennessey said.

Rebekah Hennessey, Statistics New Zealand's insights analyst for population estimates and projections, says cities often have lower fertility rates than smaller towns, but Wellington is unique in that it has a higher proportion of women in their 20s and 30s and still has a lower birth rate than other parts of Aotearoa.

“Cost of living, I think, is the obvious one, because it's just harder at the moment.

“Certainly the research has shown things like the higher cost of living, higher rents, costly house ownership, all means that higher number of children isn't necessarily doable.”

But the demographics of different areas also came into play.

Māori and Pacific women had more births on average than women from other ethnic groups. So regions and towns with more Māori and Pacific people generally had higher birth rates.

Māori and Pacific people make up a greater proportion of the population in Porirua, Upper Hutt and Lower Hutt than in Wellington city and the crude birth rate (births per 1000 people, not controlled for age or sex) for each of these cities was 11, whereas for Wellington it was 7.8.

However, Māori fertility patterns were also shifting.

Māori women were becoming māmā later in life on average and the most recent statistics showed the fertility rate for Māori was also below the replacement level.

Demographer and population expert Dr Moana Rarere (Rongomaiwahine, Ngāti Kahungunu) said while this was not yet a reason to panic, it was important to keep a close eye on differences in regional and ethnic fertility rates.

While wāhine Māori she’d interviewed for her mahi at The University of Waikato’s Te Ngira Institute for Population Research had expressed a desire and a collective responsibility to have children, many said it would be hard to raise tamariki in the current economic climate.

“I think we're starting to see the choices from yesterday are basically playing out today.”