Births Plummet in New South Wales 2023 (Daily Insight)

We take a look at the surprising decline in the number of births over the last 18-24 months of Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, using data downloaded from the Bureau of Health Information. Nearly a third of all Australians live in NSW, so can we get to the bottom of why there’s been such a massive decline in births?

There were 15,868 babies born in this quarter, which is actually a 9.2% decrease as compared to the same quarter last year. But this isn’t just a recent trend. It’s been going on for quite some time as shown in the graph in the video. The graph shows us that births have remained fairly consistent over the last 12 years, but since about June 2021, there’s been a significant dip. Less babies are being born than history would indicate.

It should be noted that the NSW population has been growing over this time period, which includes both babies born and population increases due to immigration. So actually, we should expect the net number of births to go up as the population increases, but it isn’t… It’s doing the opposite.

So what’s going on? What’s happened over the last year-and-a-half or so that warrants such a dramatic decline?



Climate change or mass sterilisation?

[Posted at the SpookyWeather2 blog, June 24, 2023.]