ANALYSIS: To Reverse Canada’s Declining Birth Rate, Cultural Changes May Be More Important Than Economic Ones

Parents and children enjoy Family Day as they take to the ice in a city park in Toronto on Feb. 15, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Frank Gunn)

Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk says the “biggest problem that humanity faces is population collapse.” The business magnate isn’t the only one to point out the severity of the declining birth rates situation that many countries face.

A Lancet study published in March warned that by the end of the century, fertility rates in 198 out of 204 countries will be too low to sustain their populations, with Sub-Saharan Africa accounting for one in every two children born.

While many governments, such as Sweden, Norway, and Taiwan, have attempted pro-natalist economic policies to encourage their citizens to have more children, they have ultimately been largely ineffective in reversing the decline.

“What the evidence shows in terms of the impact of these policies, is that they kind of work, they can increase the birth rate a little, but none of them have been sufficiently successful in raising the birth rate a lot,” Phillip Levine, a Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, told The Epoch Times.

Some experts have suggested that in order to reverse the trend of falling births, a more fundamental change in culture and values is needed.

“Changing culture is very difficult. But to the extent that [change] is going to happen, it’s got to involve making life easier for people to have children—which is not just directly related to the cost, because it clearly goes beyond that,” Mr. Levine said.

All-Time Low

While the global average fertility rate has fallen from around five children per woman in the 1960s to around 2.4 in 2021, the decline has been especially pronounced in developed countries. According to the World Bank’s 2022 data on fertility, high-income countries, such as Canada, the United States, Australia, Japan, and most of the countries of the European Union, have an average fertility rate of 1.5.

Replacement fertility—the level of fertility at which a population replaces itself from one generation to the next—is 2.1. Countries with lower levels will experience an older demographic and population decreases over time.

Policy Horizons Canada, a federal government body focused on foresight, says this could lead to issues such as strains on health-care services, worker shortage, high savings rates among older populations keeping asset prices high, potentially reduced economic growth, and tensions between generations that undermine social cohesion.

Canada’s fertility rate has mainly been falling since the 1960s, after peaking at 3.94 children per woman in 1959, according to Statistics Canada. The agency notes that the drop in fertility rates coincided with introduction of the hormonal birth control pill in 1960, followed by decriminalization of the pill and legalization of abortion in 1969. These developments contributed to pushing the birth rate down to 1.6 by 1988, which is well below the replacement level of 2.1.

The country’s fertility rate hit an all-time low in 2022, the latest year for which StatCan data is available, at 1.3 children per woman. Additionally, women have decided to delay having children, with the average age of mothers at childbirth increasing without interruption for nearly 50 years, from 26.7 years in 1976 to 31.6 years in 2022.

Despite the decline in births, Canada’s population surged from 37.9 million in 2020 to 40.1 million in 2024, with the vast majority of the increase coming from temporary and permanent immigration.

A man and children play on a climbing apparatus in a playground in Montreal on March 22, 2020. (The Canadian Press/Graham Hughes)

Contributing Factors

Statistics Canada told The Epoch Times that the trend of “lower and later” fertility trend can be attributed to the rapid growth of post-secondary education, increased access to family planning services, rising women’s labour force participation, changing gender roles, increasing infertility issues related to having children at later ages, and “increasingly challenging” economic conditions that make it harder to have multiple children.

Other factors leading to lower birth rates in Canada, said the agency, are shifting societal values such as “increasing partnership instability,” couples choosing civil partnerships or marrying later in life, the influence of parents and peers who encourage having fewer children, more people living with roommates or their parents, and a decrease in the number 0f religious Canadians, which is one of the predictors of the number of children a woman will have.

An Ipsos poll in February showed that the high cost of living is another major factor for many Canadians in their decision to have fewer children. According to the poll, commissioned by Global News, 65 percent said they’re choosing to have smaller families due to financial reasons.

‘Bizarre Era’

Roderic Beaujot, a professor emeritus of sociology and a former demographer at Statistics Canada, says that while the rising cost of living has led to fewer children being born, there has also been a cultural normalization of not having children in Canada. He said many couples have decided to focus on other endeavours, while some are even concerned that having more children will contribute to worsening climate change.

Mr. Beaujot said more generous government policies around child benefits, parental leave, and child care can make a slight difference for parents concerned about the costs of children. But he said it’s “hard to overcome the situation where people don’t want children because they think it’s harmful to have them.”

“The policies only work for those who would be oriented to have children but somehow have difficulty fitting them into their lives,” he said in an interview.

Sylvain Charlebois, a senior director of Dalhousie University’s agri-food analytics lab, agreed that there has been a cultural shift in Canada against having children. He said that during a recent campus discussion on sustainability, he was singled out for having four children.

“The comment left me not only shocked but also disheartened by the audience’s lack of response,” Mr. Charlebois said.

The professor told The Epoch Times that the West is entering a “bizarre era” where having children is looked down upon on the grounds of potential damage to the environment. “Of course, not everyone will have children, but I don’t think the environment should be part of the equation when it comes to raising kids or deciding to have children,” he said.

“The decision to have children, to me, is probably one of the most core responsibilities,” Mr. Charlebois said. “You’re responsible for adding new souls on earth, and so it needs to be appreciated a little bit more, I think.”

Government Incentives

Peter Jon Mitchell, the program director for Cardus Family, says that although governments have tried to provide benefits to families with children, these efforts have typically resulted in only a modest increase in birth rates and have been costly. He points to Quebec’s birth allowance scheme, which began in 1988 but has not stopped the province’s birth rate from falling to its lowest point in 20 years in 2024.

“That’s not to say that we can’t address these economic barriers for families, but I think this requires some humility on the side of public policy,” he said.

Mr. Levine points out that even though Sweden has generous pro-child policies, such as 480 days of paid parental leave per child and 525 free hours of child care a year, its fertility rate is still below replacement level, at 1.5 children per woman.

“It’s really difficult to think of specific policy proposals, ... which doesn’t mean that there isn’t a way to do it. I just don’t know what it is,” Mr. Levine said.

Jennifer Sciubba, president and CEO of the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C., said the current approaches by governments when it comes to increasing birth rates have not worked.

“I think they are looking for there to be this one particular factor, without thinking about how all these factors come together,” she told The Epoch Times.

‘Much Work to Be Done’

Mr. Mitchell said that in order to reverse declining birth rates, Canadian politicians and institutions must first have the “courage” to raise the issue.

“In Canada, we really haven’t had a robust conversation on declining fertility. Maybe that’s because it’s a long-term issue that requires long-term commitment to thinking it through, and this is a problem beyond the election cycle,” he said.

Ms. Scuibba, previously a demographics consultant to the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defence, suggested that the focus should be on building strong communities “at the very local level” that would support people of all generations.

“Building strong communities ... is a way that could move the fertility needle, but it’s not the goal. The goal is the strong, supportive community,” she said.

While many Canadians have decided they would rather not have children, according to a January 2023 study by Ottawa-based think tank Cardus, a “considerable” number of women reported desiring more children than they will likely ever have.

The survey of 2,700 women aged 18 to 44 indicated that nearly half of women at the end of their reproductive years had fewer children than they wanted, with the number of “missing” births vastly outnumbering “excess” births.

Mr. Mitchell said the survey suggested that the top five factors that would decrease women’s likelihood of having a child in the next two years were a desire to grow as a person or to save money, a focus on their career, the fact that children require intensive care, and lack of a suitable partner.

“Public policy can do some work on removing barriers to entry into family life for younger Canadians, but there’s also this cultural side,” Mr. Mitchell told The Epoch Times. “I think there’s much work to be done on messaging around having children and giving people the confidence in parenting.”