There's a baby drought in Australia. Maybe we should fund IVF?
There's a baby drought in Australia. Maybe we should fund IVF?
Artificial intelligence support workers could be in Australia's future if the fertility rate continues to stay the same.
Maybe, just maybe it shouldn't cost close to 10k to even TRY to have a kid through IVF? More like 15k out of pocket costs till the Medicare rebate anyway.
1 in 6 aussie couples will struggle with infertility whilst 1 in 20 kids is born of IVF. https://monashivf.com/one-in-six/
1 in 6 couples. 1 in 20 babies. You can see a fair gap here. Unless your comfortably "middle class", you screwed. yes there are some public clinics with no gap, but the wait times are staggering. If we're worried about falling birth rates FULLY funding IVF and fertility treatments through Medicare is a no brainer.
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.
I'm convinced most did not think at all.
There are eight young kids within my extended family, only two of them were planned - my child, and my sisters child.
The other six, I just feel sorry for. Their parents are... Well... You know...
I'm a trauma researcher. So many people shouldn't have kids.
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.
That and the fact that women are still penalized in the workplace for having babies.
As someone with a three year old kid in Australia, I think the government does a pretty good job at all of those things.
For example we've only ever paid medical bills for things that were totally optional, and the free services were extensive (including repeated 1:1 home visits by a professional midwife - for free, and for the actual birth there was more staff attending that mum than anyone else in the hospital gets - even Intensive Care Unit patients get a lower level of care).
Education will be free starting next year, and the optional education he's enrolled in this year and in the last couple years have been extensively subsidised (and would be subsidised even more if our income was lower).
Money and time are and always will be in direct opposition to each other and every parent has to make a tradeoff between the two, and not really anything the government can control. But it's worth noting basic living expenses (like staple foods) are largely exempt from taxes, and the recent high cost of electricity, due to the ukraine war, has triggered government assistance packages to help people out (everyone, but low income people have been get even more help — we actually haven't paid an electricity bill at all the last 8 months or so - from memory we're about $100 in credit due to various subsidies).
Could it be better? Sure - for example I think free education should start younger and include things like swimming lessons (enough to not drown). But I don't really have any complaints.
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.
covid, expensive housing, war, climate change, death, destruction, doom
Honestly, I doubt any of these apart from expensive housing is playing a significant role. I haven't seen any reliable data on it, but I suspect a vanishingly small number of people genuinely choose not to have kids "because I don't want to bring kids into this terrible world". The cost of living thing though? That's something that affects the parents and their ability to feel like they even can raise a child right now.
Had a vasectomy about 30 years becase their are too many people on the planet. That was the case then, now it's fucking ridiculous.
One of the reasons we increasingly have a "terrible world" is too many people.
I'd suggest tax laws to discourage people having children.
Can always adopt if you feel the need, the world seems awash with unwanted kids who already exist..
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!
Silence peasant! We need more slaves!
Well, yes.
Our assorted clans, tribes, societies or cultures regardless of where or when in our species' history have always relied on a stream of babies. Needing babies is not in question.
And when they didn't have a stream of babies they traded to get more people. Or just outright stole them.
It's going to be an interesting time when the generation of 10 people is faced with hunting and gathering for the generation of 1000. Pro-tip: It doesn't end well for the generation of 1000
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.
Agreed. Sacrifice something if you want to have a child
From a purely business perspective, gaining a well-educated taxpayer in 20 years is going to cost a lot more than $10k (healthcare, education etc). But, is an extra $10k investment now worth that taxpayer in 20 years?
I personally pay well over this amount annually in taxes. It sounds like a good investment on the face of it I just don't know how many people this will pay for.
Aren’t there enough people in the world already?!!?!?
The number of people in the world is predicted to start going negative before the end of this century.
Somehow I would not weep for that. Humanity has become a disease, if it was ever other than that.
Exactly
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.
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.
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.
More and more people are turning to IVF because they're ageing out of peak or have stressors completely b0rking their reproductive systems. Both of which would be fixed if we stabilised our fcking housing and affordability issues for the general population instead of the landed few.
No.
Maybe if the cost of living is addressed than people would be more likely to want more kids.
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.
@Peddlephile We had a costly and convoluted IVF journey, so big hugs.
But it’s not just female health! It’s human health. It meant just as much to me as a ‘man’ as it did to my wife. It’s so strange to make it a female thing.
Thank you so much. I hope you and your wife's IVF journey was more successful than mine.
Agree - human health. I guess I was thinking about my surgery costs for endometriosis on top of IVF and how it wasn't covered by Medicare at all. Medicare coverage has huge gaps and I hate how the government whittles away at it rather than expanding it.
I look forward to seeing how this plan helps the indigenous peoples.
??? I don't think this is targeted at Indigenous Australians, I think the point of the article is that the economy requires population growth in order to grow. I suppose economic growth may be a threat to Indigenous communities if more land is taken to support the growth.
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.
The original article contains 998 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
You just gotta go outside and do the baby dance similar to how one would call a rain storm.