Juno News - Why Canada should take its fertility crisis more seriously

00:00:00.000 We're doing all the nostalgia here, but talking about kids is a good segue into our next topic,

00:00:14.300 which is the reality that most Canadians are not having them, or I shouldn't say most,

00:00:20.200 but Canadians are having children in fewer and fewer numbers. And I would say fewer and fewer

00:00:24.760 young Canadians are coupling up and actually building that basis of a family that might in

00:00:30.300 turn have children. We have a fertility rate that is well below replacement, and no one from a policy

00:00:36.900 perspective has really decided to tackle this head on, which is why we end up talking about this

00:00:41.960 in the context of immigration as a population growth mechanism, because there are not Canadian

00:00:48.400 families having kids with enough numbers to increase the population that way. It's a third

00:00:54.220 rail in politics and policy. We talked about it a little while ago with Ginny Roth when we caught

00:00:59.500 up at the Canada Strong and Free Network Conference, but it was delved into in a very thoughtful piece

00:01:04.680 that was published at The Hub, We Are Not Taking Canada's Fertility Crisis Seriously Enough. The

00:01:10.940 author of that is Dr. Tim Sargent, who's a distinguished fellow with the Centre for International

00:01:15.160 Governance Innovation, and also the Deputy Executive Director at the Centre for the Study

00:01:20.220 of Living Standards. Tim, it's good to talk to you. Thanks so much for writing this and for

00:01:24.100 coming on today. Thanks for having me, Andrew.

00:01:27.040 So let's begin by talking about the term crisis here, and why is this, in your view, something

00:01:32.760 we can call that? Well, for me, it's a slow motion crisis, but it's a crisis nonetheless.

00:01:41.180 You have a society that's basically not reproducing itself. That's not a society that's probably

00:01:47.220 going to exist over the very long term. And it's a little bit like boiling the frog. We've had

00:01:52.540 low replacement fertility rates for quite some time. But we've seen just in the last 10 years,

00:01:58.320 our fertility rates gone from 1.6, which wasn't great, but it was a similar level to countries

00:02:03.680 like the UK, the US. And now it's down to 1.3, and it's dropped quite rapidly. And this is something

00:02:08.660 that started before COVID. So it's related to something, I think, quite deep seated in our society.

00:02:14.340 One of the things that I find interesting is that we used to, people that talk about this issue and

00:02:20.680 look at this issue, look at Japan as being the worst of the worst. Japan has always been the 1.00

00:02:26.240 standout example of a country with a true fertility crisis, and they're at 1.3. So we're at really what

00:02:33.360 we've always looked at as being the worst in this around the world. That's right. So we always used

00:02:38.920 to look at a country like Germany, for instance, and say that, well, they had a lower fertility rate

00:02:43.540 than us. But now Germany is higher than us. We're at 1.33. They're at 1.45. So we really are dropping

00:02:50.000 down the league tables here. And we're down to levels close to Italy or Japan. We're not as bad

00:02:56.940 as a career, for instance, which is now down at 0.72. But we're still at quite low levels now. I mean,

00:03:04.100 what 1.3 means is that for every 10 Canadians, there will be only four grandchildren.

00:03:13.660 Now, the one thing, I mean, there are two aspects of this. There's the domestic picture,

00:03:17.680 and then there's the global picture. And the one thing that we fail to take into consideration,

00:03:22.200 even if you say, okay, well, Canada can perhaps grow its population by immigration. Well, that still

00:03:28.260 isn't changing the global crisis that we see unfolding, because this is happening around the world.

00:03:33.000 countries like Hungary that have really, as a matter of government policy, tried to right this

00:03:38.060 trend are in short supply. What do you think that is? Is it that countries are just uninterested in

00:03:45.940 talking about this issue because they just are scared of it? They're afraid of the politicization

00:03:52.900 of it? Or is it that no one has found a solution?

00:03:55.280 I mean, I think it's both. I mean, some countries, I mean, Hungary is one. But of course,

00:04:03.040 even in Canada, if you look at Quebec, for instance, in the late 1980s and early 1990s,

00:04:08.000 they were introducing policy to encourage people to have more children. I mean, partly, I think nobody

00:04:13.920 wants to be seen to be telling women how many children that they should have. You know, nobody wants 1.00

00:04:19.600 a sort of a handmaid's tale kind of society. But the reality is, if you actually ask women how many

00:04:26.120 children they want, they will generally say more than two. On average, it's a little bit more than

00:04:30.760 two. That's true, not just in Canada, but across the Western world. So then the question is, why aren't

00:04:36.640 women having more children, even though they say that that's what they want? You know, urbanization, 1.00

00:04:43.160 I think is a key factor here. Obviously, people have more money. They're likely to find leisure

00:04:51.540 pursuits and things, you know, ways to spend that money rather than starting a family. If you look at

00:04:58.960 countries around the world, I mean, nobody's had huge success. Even in a country like Hungary,

00:05:04.880 where now, you know, if you're a woman and you have four children, you don't pay any income tax, 0.70

00:05:09.440 which sounds, I think, pretty attractive to a lot of us. They've managed to move their birth rate up,

00:05:15.980 but they're still significantly below fertility. Countries like Poland have tried this as well,

00:05:23.000 at least try to increase fertility. So we're seeing, you know, perhaps, you know, doing a little bit

00:05:28.020 better. Quebec, when it had its baby bonus, did see its fertility rate tick up from around about 1.4

00:05:35.360 to around about 1.6, 1.7. So countries do seem to have some success on the margin, but the only

00:05:41.460 advanced country now that has an above replacement rate fertility is Israel. And of course, there's a 0.76

00:05:47.380 very special circumstances around Israel. There's a wicked problem aspect here in that you have a 1.00

00:05:54.260 number of different, you know, influencing factors here, and you could tackle one and not the other.

00:05:59.140 I mean, one that you touch on in your study is the delay in many young Canadians in leaving home.

00:06:05.460 So if you have one fifth of adults, 25 to 34, living with their parents, these are the data you've

00:06:10.620 showed, then that raises a number of practical challenges to your dating life, for example. It

00:06:18.720 raises challenges then in partnering up with someone where you, so that's one example. And we can look at

00:06:24.560 then, okay, why are Canadians living at their living at home? Is it economic? Okay, well, we have an

00:06:29.300 economic issue, a housing issue, you could solve that. And you maybe have only accounted for, let's

00:06:35.140 say, 10% of the problem, when you have all of these other factors.

00:06:41.120 Exactly. So you have to kind of look at people's life cycles here. I mean, you know, in order to have

00:06:47.700 children, you know, first, you know, most people will want to be in a couple before they do that.

00:06:51.900 And in order to be a couple, most people, you know, need to kind of leave home and set up a new

00:06:56.540 family unit. So, you know, certainly there are explanations like housing, for instance. I mean,

00:07:02.320 if you want to leave home, you need somewhere to live and start a family, you probably want a bigger

00:07:06.000 house. So those are explanations that do touch at this whole sequence of events that needs to happen.

00:07:13.380 But there's probably some deeper social cultural things going on as well. And as you say, Andrew,

00:07:17.800 you know, you can't just look at one aspect of this problem. There seems to be something that

00:07:23.200 the traditional model of, you know, you grow up, you leave home, start, you know, find a life

00:07:29.380 partner, and then have children. That traditional model just doesn't seem to be as popular amongst

00:07:35.620 Canadians or, frankly, across the Western world as it used to be. It's still what most people are doing,

00:07:40.380 but few and few people are doing it. I've heard mixed, sort of mixed weight given to economic

00:07:47.380 factors for people not having children, because I think we often hear, oh, it's too expensive to

00:07:51.820 have kids, it's too difficult. But I've also heard some studies that have showed that's really not the

00:07:56.820 reason people aren't, that very few people are refraining from having children because of the

00:08:00.900 cost. And I was wondering if you could weigh in on that.

00:08:02.980 Sure. I mean, the reality is, our grandparents, you know, had way less in terms of resources than

00:08:10.000 we have, and yet tended to have more children. You know, my grandmother lived in a small village

00:08:16.280 in the north of Yorkshire, and her husband was farm laborer, and they had four children.

00:08:20.960 So, you know, some of these economic arguments don't really work. Generally, what we see is the

00:08:26.260 more money people have, the fewer kids that they're having. And so, you know, I think to say, well,

00:08:31.840 you know, we can't afford children. Well, okay, but why wasn't that true 20, 30 years ago? Because

00:08:38.560 certainly, although incomes have been, you know, haven't really been advancing that much in Canada

00:08:44.260 the last couple of years, if you look over the last couple of decades, people now are a lot better

00:08:49.860 off than they were 20, 30 years ago. In your proposals of just possible policies that we could

00:08:56.700 include, one that I found interesting, because it's not often, I don't often see it in this context,

00:09:01.060 was looking at ways to reduce the formal educational requirements for jobs. So to actually

00:09:07.720 basically get people into the labor market earlier. And I was wondering if you could expound on that a

00:09:11.420 bit. Sure, because I think, well, one thing that's happening is people are spending longer and longer

00:09:16.100 in formal education. And, you know, particularly for women, that's a problem, because fertility for 1.00

00:09:22.460 women starts to fall after the age of 30, and falls quite significantly after the age of 35. So the more 1.00

00:09:30.060 time you're spending in formal education, and people usually, for obvious reasons, want to put

00:09:34.940 off starting a family until they've completed their formal education. Often, you want to get the kind

00:09:39.580 of that first job, get your first step on the career ladder before having a family. So all of that is

00:09:44.420 narrowing the window that people have to start a family and have children. And so I think we do need

00:09:51.200 to ask ourselves as a society, do we necessarily need the, you know, the credentials? Do we need

00:09:56.800 people to be spending quite as long in informal education as they as they currently do? You know,

00:10:02.560 Canadians were a very, very educated society. And, and that's a good thing. But we now have so many

00:10:08.320 people going to university, there are certainly a number of researchers have raised the idea that we may

00:10:13.440 just be getting into a bit of a rat race. You know, think of medical school, for instance,

00:10:19.280 huge number of people applying to medical school. And so you can be choosier about who you take, you

00:10:24.720 know, in times gone by, it may have been just enough to have had a medical degree, but now people want

00:10:29.840 you to do another degree first, and then maybe a master's degree, and then maybe some, some, some,

00:10:35.360 some other training as well before you even get into medical school, which is to say nothing about

00:10:40.400 the amount of time that you have to spend there. So it's what economists call credentialism. So

00:10:45.920 the idea is that, you know, university often just simply acts as a way to, to, to filter people,

00:10:52.000 according to ability, and spending five years there, as opposed to three years, isn't necessarily

00:10:58.800 improving your, your, your, your human capital, what employers are just using university as, as a

00:11:04.480 sorting mechanism, which is all very well, but it means that more and more of people's reproductive

00:11:10.320 years are being spent, you know, going and getting these credentials.

00:11:14.640 Well, and there's also been a decline of careers. I mean, we've all heard sort of the rise of the

00:11:19.760 gig economy. And I think the economy in some ways has been a positive, it gives people opportunities

00:11:25.120 and flexibility and whatnot. But a lot of that is not coming about because someone has chosen to engage

00:11:30.720 in gig work, it's because it's been available to them. And that idea, I mean, not that we're ever going

00:11:34.880 to go back to the eight days where, you know, you started a company and you're there for 40 years and

00:11:39.600 you retire and it's great. Like, I think that era is, is pretty much over, but the, the inability for

00:11:45.440 a lot of people or the apparent inability to find a career that gives them that stability is I think not

00:11:52.800 helping. Oh, absolutely. I mean, when, you know, having a family is even, even getting married and

00:12:00.400 and settling down and buying a house, I mean, that, that's a bet on the future. And so you need to have

00:12:05.440 pretty positive view of the future. You need to have an idea that there's a, you know, there's,

00:12:10.000 there's a bit of a ladder there. You know, hopefully that you'll, you know, you'll have a fairly safe

00:12:16.320 and stable stream of income. And when you ask people about, about the future,

00:12:22.640 Canadians are much more, especially young Canadians are much more worried about the future than,

00:12:27.280 than they used to be much more concerned about their ability to, you know, to, to have a house,

00:12:31.760 to have, to have a decent income. And so I, as you say, Andrew, yes, people may be, you know,

00:12:37.520 making enough now, but will that stream continue in the future? People just aren't as sure of that

00:12:42.160 as they might've been 20, 30, 40 years ago when the labor market looked quite different.

00:12:47.680 Well, it's a fascinating piece in the hub. And if that is not enough for you, you should go and read

00:12:53.120 the actual report in the Macdonald Laurier Institute, which is 56 pages, but very readable.

00:12:59.040 And I think very significant. Dr. Tim Sargent, well done. And thank you so much for coming on.

00:13:04.400 Thanks for having me, Andrew. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:13:08.400 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - May 18, 2024

Why Canada should take its fertility crisis more seriously

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