Pictured: Representative image of the feet of an infant taking a bath.
Pictured: Representative image of the feet of an infant taking a bath.

Australia is reportedly witnessing a significant drop in birth rates, with experts blaming the rising living costs and economic uncertainties for the decline.

The total count of births fell to 289,100 in 2023, which marked a sharp 4.6% drop from the previous year and the lowest since 2006, as per a KPMG analysis.

A significant reason behind the drop was thought to be housing costs in major cities -- a situation that mirrored the 1970s' baby recession, caused by similar financial challenges, reported The Guardian.

Many young couples are shying away from starting a family or having more babies due to the economic uncertainty that befell Australia after the pandemic, noted Terry Rawnsley, an urban economist at KPMG.

"We haven't seen such a sharp drop in births in Australia since the period of economic stagflation in the 1970s, which coincided with the initial widespread adoption of the contraceptive pill," he said.

After analyzing current data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, KPMG found that most capital cities -- with the exception of Canberra -- have consistently declining birth rates, ABC News reported.

"That's quite a significant drop and we had to look back to the 1970s to see the same level of decline," Rawnsley said. "Housing, for example, is much more expensive in Melbourne than in Geelong. So people who are thinking about starting families, the mortgage and the rent is the first thing," ABC News reported.

Canberra and Tasmania did not see a "baby boom," but their birth rates did not change much. Tasmania was the only area to have a discernible increase in births, up 2.1% from 2019 statistics, according to KPMG's study.

"That's probably a bit of a housing affordability story," Rawnsley said. "The CPI increases in those two areas weren't quite as high as the rest of the country so there's probably a little bit of cost of living buffer in those cities."

Rawnsley noted that inner-city birth rates were lower compared to outer suburban and regional areas, which he attributed to the size and type of housing available in these urban centers.

Moreover, most metropolitan areas were characterized by towering high-rises housing increasingly compact apartments, which may not be suitable for larger families. Thus, it is thought that the preponderance of smaller dwelling units in these areas contributes to the lower fertility rates.