Canada’s birth rate has dropped off a cliff (and it’s likely because nobody can afford housing)
Canada’s birth rate has dropped off a cliff (and it’s likely because nobody can afford housing)
More than a third of young people say they are foregoing children because they can't afford a proper home for them
Statistics Canada confirmed last week that 351,679 babies were born in 2022 — the lowest number of live births since 345,044 births were recorded in 2005.
The disparity is all the more notable given that Canada had just 32 million people in 2005, as compared to the 40 million it counted by the end of 2022. In 2005, it was already at historic lows for Canada to have a fertility rate of 1.57 births per woman. But given the 2022 figures, that fertility rate has now sunk to 1.33.
...
Of Canadians in their 20s, Statistics Canada found that 38 per cent of them “did not believe they could afford to have a child in the next three years” — with about that same number (32 per cent) saying they doubted they’d be able to find “suitable housing” in which to care for a baby.
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A January survey by the Angus Reid Group asked women to list the ideal size of their family against its actual size, and concluded that the average Canadian woman reached the end of their childbearing years with 0.5 fewer children than they would have wanted
“In Canada, unlike many other countries, fertility rates and desires rise with income: richer Canadians have more children,” it read.
I would love to pump some baby batter into my gf and start having a kids, can't do that while we're stuck living paycheque to paycheque on a combined 130k in my parents basement.
Sorry but how are you living paycheck to paycheck with that income and little to no rent?
Without writing out my whole life story: student loans, unexpected vehicle issues (public transit isn't an option where I live), out of pocket medical costs not covered by benefits or gov't, long commutes with expensive gas and no feasible alternatives and few job opportunities closer to home in my field. Can't afford to move due to high rents so I'm stuck driving.
There's more but I'm hungry and wanna eat dinner and don't feel like going into it. We save everything that isn't essential and barely go out for fun, anything extra goes towards a down payment but the way things are going right not it doesn't look like we'll be able to buy for years unless we can put away like 2k a month.
When people say pay cheque to pay cheque in this type of situation they're still putting money away into savings typically but are out of reach of where they need to be. There's usually large debts, medical costs or other financial burdens that aren't mentioned like maybe taking care of a family member. Their pay cheque to pay cheque situation is a bit different than someone working minimum wage and will be out on the streets as they still have money going into some sort of savings
How bad is housing in Canada right now? This is not a prominent topic here in Europe, so let's say you look for a 200 m² house in the outer parts of a bigger city, what would be the price for that?
Start with income perspective. The average annual salary in 2022 was just under $60,000. Nationally, the average house price in summer 2023 was a bit over $750,000. These incomes and house prices are affected pretty strongly by the lower incomes and lower housing costs in rural Canada vs the major cities like Vancouver and Toronto
So.. shift attention to the cities. In Toronto and Vancouver, the average house price is around $1,200,000 give or take a little. You need at a combined income of least $280,000 to qualify for a house like that (or have substantial equity built up in previous home purchases). Most people are earning at or close to the national average... with a few - especially those in STEM careers (sw devs for example) up over $100,000 per year.
I live in a suburb city (I own my house)... it's inconveniently located if you want/need to be in the core city centre for work (I'm about 3 hours commute right now if I needed to go in to a downtown office.. thankfully I don't). Houses on my street are relatively new (most built in 2019 and 2020). The houses currently for sale are listing between $1,250,000 and $2,350,000.
Renting can be really awful in Canada too... you get stunts like this https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/this-is-egregious-sisters-shocked-when-toronto-landlord-raises-rent-to-9-500-a-month-1.6548845 simply because they can...
tl;dr Housing in Canada is bonkers
I bought a townhouse that was 1700sqft (~150m^2) in Markharm, a suburb of the GTA (1hr to the center of toronto by car, 1.5hrs by bus), in a pretty bad area for 800K CAD during a slight market crash during covid. By all accounts this was an exceptionally good deal, by realtor didn't think we could get anything for under 900. I sold that townhouse for 1.1 mil in 2023.
You technically can, but she has to be on the pill.
It’s wild to consider that $130k combined income can’t even get you on the lowest rung of the housing ladder.
Now consider that the average wage - half of all people make less - is only $48k in Canada.
Groceries and housing cost way too much for many people to make babies.
And student loans and healthcare and transportation
Costs too little, you mean. When housing and groceries are actually unaffordable, people have children to help grow food and prepare supplies for shelter. This is why birth rates are still quite high in poor countries and why birthrates fall off a cliff when people have plenty of resources readily available.
Please show me on the map where I can take my future family and farm the land on my theoretical meager wealth.
There is none.
We don't live in a world where the average human can farm their own food meaningfully anymore. Not at scale at least. The lands been bought, built on, or industrialized for large scale crop harvest.
What you are proposing doesn't work in most places on this planet anymore.
Tax domestic speculators. It's such an easy solution. It's going to be painful because it's been allowed to happen for so long. Canadians are doing this to other Canadians but no politician wants to do this to help end this gross cycle of exploitation, add in the fact provinces like Ontario that remove things like rent control and things become even further out of reach.
but no politician wants to do this
Because it's political suicide. They have a Silver Tsunami coming up, and thanks to a) many companies weakening retirement plans (defined benefit? LOL), b) recessions wiping out people's savings, there's been a concerted shift to using home-ownership to bandage over old-age income security.
Prior to this, moderate investment and company pensions were enough to see you through, but that's largely gone--just another part of our society that we sold off so that the rich can get more tax breaks. The cherry-on-top? We sold off LTCs to private companies, so elder-care is now a for-profit luxury.
The only way Boomers can retire is home equity. Heck, it's the only thing fuelling our economy in general.
Of course, this is fixable: tax the rich. Pay for a society that works for everyone, not just Galen Weston or David Thompson. It would have been easier to do this back in the 1990s (before the problem really started in earnest) or before 2018 (when it got fully out of control) but it's still possible.
You're right. Supply May be an issue, but it will take decades to rectify. We can change tax, zoning, and immigration policy right now.
Who the fuck is financially prepared for having children?
As a father of two, I sure as shit wasn't.
We were. We started a bit later than average though. I regret that, tbh.
I wasn't expecting child care to be quite so expensive, but the tax refunds in the first few years were helpful.
Well, when your rent is 50% of your income and your food costs take up almost 30% of your income and your bills take up the remainder and you're constantly one missed paycheck from homelessness and starvation and your family are in equally dire straits and so cannot bail you out - having children becomes entirely impossible.
You say you weren't financially prepared, but evidently it was financially possible for you to have children. For at least half of my generation it just point blank is not possible.
I was. Millennial father of two.
This is quickly becoming a crisis for the next twenty years but nobody is doing a god damned thing to actually fix the cost of living issue.
We need to vote in people affected by this, not benefitting from it.
Do you have the time or resources to run for office?
Wealth and power is a feedback loop.
Imagine wanting to have a child in times where the only way to afford a house is to never purchase a single thing with your next 4 decades worth of pay cheques from a high paying job.
Then come find out you get to finally own a single square foot of land because everyone else comes in and swoops up everywhere else or the bar rises quicker than you could ever hope to catch up with or some other dumb reason.
There’s too many people on this planet anyways.
By what measure? Industry and a small minority of extremely wealthy people are setting the agenda to destroy the planet, not average people.
Look at what we did to the planet with the current (and smaller) population sizes. You think adding MORE people isn’t going to become an issue?
We are, in the near future, going to have a mass migration of people away from no longer inhabitable land.
Those people you’re talking about aren’t going to give up power and let “average people” right the ship. And those same “average people” have been placated and conditioned to buy shiny trinkets and celebrate touchdowns and home runs instead of organizing and uprooting the real problem makers.
By just about every measure? Would you rather have a smaller population and the same standard of living, or a larger population and a considerably lower standard of living? The earth's resources and abilities to heal itself are finite. The more people we have, the more restrictive our quality of life needs to be. Instead of having a house on some usable land, a garden, and some chickens, you're forced into a stacked box, with one window, and no yard, surrounded by other stacked boxes. Plus the impact of everything you do is magnified. Oh, you want to drive to the store? Better walk 20 blocks instead, because we're already at our carbon capacity. That last example was hyperbole, but it's not that far fetched. Basically a lower population gives us a lot more leeway to live our lives comfortably.
By what measure?
Literally every objective measure of our planet's health? We are permanently changing the atmosphere, simultaneously causing a mass extinction event, and virtually every environmental preserve and tourist attraction is facing huge damage from overuse.
Every human being has a carbon cost, none of us are carbon negative or neutral, until we build systems that change that, every extra human we add is destroying our planet faster.
There's also the fact that heavily developed nations with declining birth rates are also overwhelmingly responsible for climate change.
Ugh, I hate this argument. I always wonder: so what do you propose ? Many countries' retirement system are built on the active population paying for the retired population. What do you think happens when there are more retired than actives?
Low birth rate is a real serious issue for many countries. The problem is not overpopulation, it's poverty and how we manage our resources.
Capitalism and retirement is set up as a pyramid scheme. We shouldn't be looking at situations that were recklessly arranged assuming endless growth and saying "how do we prevent population contraction" - that's insanity. We need to figure out how to retool society for a post-growth world.
If the only way to prevent the music from stopping is a pyramid scheme, we're all fucked.
No there's not. There's too many people for capitalism
I have long speculated that the reason why birthrate goes down in societies with a higher standard of living is because a higher standard of living effectively reduces the "carrying capacity" of the environment for humans. Which is not a bad thing, IMO, it's just the underlying explanatory reason for why we see this pattern. Access to family planning and such is just part of the mechanism this operates by.
A common pattern in population dynamics is the S-curve, where population initially grows in an exponential-like pattern and then flattens back out again as it approaches the environment's carrying capacity. I think we'll see that with the human population too, and we are in the unique position as a species of being able to somewhat control where that carrying capacity will be. In this specific case here, we could boost our capacity for population growth by making housing more affordable.
Unless something happens - like, say, running out of manufactured fertilizers - that reduces the carrying capacity. Then we'll have a bell curve.
Education .... the more educated and informed a population becomes, the fewer children they have. It doesn't mean that the population is very highly educated overall ... even just a small uptick of an education lowers the birthrate. It just means that with a bit of knowledge, experience and education people become less likely to want to have children.
I agree with you in the general sense. In this case it's more of speculators exploiting the market and destroying the future for many of the provinces across this country.
There are a few people in my family that are married with good jobs and own their own homes and they are not having children. They are focusing on other things. I am proud of them as I am proud of those in my family who have chosen to have children. This does not need to be one more point of division. It is OK to have kids and it is OK to not have kids.
Financial security should not be the biggest factor in deciding if a family wants kids, but it the modern economic system it is a very significant factor. It is hard imagining having another mouth to feed, spend liesure time with, and do parental tasks while both partners are working 50 hours a week while living paycheck to paycheck with little ability for savings to keep up with inflation or costs of living.
I have friends that decided kids where expensive. But they still want one. This, they adopted a dog. The dog is their kid now.
Oh wow, so where everything else is pointing to an idiocracy type apocalyptic future, the movie got the birth rate thing wrong.
I wonder how much of the cost of living crisis is due to our shitty productivity?
It seems like regulations and government programs favour incumbents, be it telecoms who don't want to deal with upstarts, fish plant owners who don't want to automate, Tims franchises who don't want to pay their workers, or NIMBYs.
I get that there were supply chain issues due to COVID-19, but did those cause problems, or exacerbate existing issues?
The Competition Act was weakly designed with the purpose of allowing a few Canadian companies to grow large. It was thought at the time that this would mean Canada could be a big player on the global stage, but instead it just trapped Canadians in the inevitable consequences of a marketplace dominated by monopolies-- high prices and little choice. You can thank Chicago school economics acolytes and leaders like Mulroney, Reagan, and Thatcher for htis.
High cost of living is one of the causes of recent drops in productivity. There might even be a feedback loop hidden so where in there.
Financial capitalism is another factor. Investing in the housing to have financial products with high financial return. It's part of the speculation allowed in our neoliberal economy.
Add that the incomes are the same for decades and you end up with this. Housing or better having a decent place to live has to be a fundamental right.
I was one third of a baby and let me tell you, it wasn't easy
at the same time we've had the highest immigration numbers. Canada was always immigrant country. I don't see it as a negative thing in general. Lots of immigrants and their children are higher motivated individuals so it could be a good thing. One thing to watch out for is erosion of values in society. So just welcome newcomers and show them what does it mean to be Canadian 😃
But immigration is mostly made up of refugees who are usually pretty poor, and they come here and we have no housing for them. It's honestly embarrassing that we welcome so many and yet they end up in shelters.
Good! Maybe we can get back to sane population levels and half of these problems with the housing market and global warming will just resolve themselves. The earth's population has more than doubled since I was born, and let me tell ya, it's noticeable. It's noticeable everywhere I look.
LoL no. Let's import people to continue Canada's growth and keep providing cheap labor to Canada's corporations.
Fuck cars.
Cars are taking our living spaces, roads, excessive parking. Cars are ruining out health, pollution, no one walk anymore. Cars are expensive for everyone. Cars are a drain on society's wealth and yet, we made damn sure that everyone need one.
Cars are probably one of the biggest factor, in my opinion, for a lot of problems in society.
Considering that if you aren't making a lot, you can get quite a bit of money every month for each kid through child benefits until they are 18, I don't think the cost of housing is the issue.
Here's a radical thought: Maybe people simply don't want to be burdened by kids.
Perhaps if we stopped pressuring mothers into believing that they NEED to have kids, or that couples can't be complete without a real family.
Maybe then we can start normalizing the fact that not everyone actually wants (or needs) kids.
EDIT: For you idiots downvoting, could you at least read the study? It agrees with what I wrote!
That's a joke, right? When I looked it was only 500 to 620 a month per kid.
You have baby items to worry about, needing a crap ton of clothes (kids grow a LOT), having adequate nutrition (growth spurts too), school supplies, and more. If you're already barely making ends meet, of COURSE you'll struggle if you add another human being. Of course, cost of living also varies by area, as well as public transportation. Without that, you'd have to hope that you live near essentials like a family doctor, or you'd have to pony up even more money for a car and child seat.
If that's not enough, you also get the fun of society looking down on your for "having kids before you were ready". Many of us heard that from adults throughout the entire time we grew up. Why voluntarily walk into that? Nah. IF I ever have a kid, it won't be untilI can guarantee that that doesn't happen.
I think they misunderstood a Stats Canada paper to get a wildly unrealistic cost estimate. I linked it and some numbers in a reply further up.
I've raised two, and they are rising their own.
If an extra 500+ a month isn't enough, then you are overspending for no good reason!
Buy second hand, learn how to be frugal with certain items, get most larger items from a baby shower (if you have one), etc., don't get sucked into blitz marketing that targets new parents, etc.
Kids become more of a financial burden when they grow up... age 10-18 and beyond, and that money is still rolling in.
If that’s not enough, you also get the fun of society looking down on your for “having kids before you were ready”. Many of us heard that from adults throughout the entire time we grew up.
That's my point from my original comment. Society is pressuring people into “wanting” kids, but a great number of people simply don't, and that's OK!
I can attest from personal experience, finances are 100% the reason me and my partner can't have kids right now. Its very hard to justify brining a kid into this world when its hard to maintain stability for 2 adults, let alone with the costs required to raise a child.
We were evicted from our last home for no other reason than the greed of our landlord. That stress would have been tenfold if we had to go through that with kids.
I can attest from personal experience, finances are 100% the reason me and my partner can’t have kids right now.
And government child benefits wouldn't help? If you are struggling that much (and I don't suggest having a kid if you are struggling at all), the government will pay you monthly for the next 18 years that you have a child...
I think you need to look beyond finances to make this decision, though. Do you have the energy and time for a kid? Are you willing to put all your plans on hold for the foreseeable future, potentially burden your relationship, for a child? Will you be able to quit your job to spend your entire day caring for a child with special needs? Are you willing to care for that child beyond age 18, when the financial burden of supporting them (a third adult) could jeopardize your retirement?
The decision to have a child shouldn't be made lightly, regardless of how strong society pushes for it. Neither should the decision to have pets, but I digress.
I do wish you and your partner all the best, and hope that you find more financial stability in your lives.
It's not a radical thought, it's just wrong.
Desired fertility is higher than actual fertility. https://ifstudies.org/blog/why-canadian-women-arent-having-the-children-they-desire
I have three kids, and if money wasn't a factor my wife and I would probably have 4 or 5
As the oldest of six, having grown up quite poor, thank you for stopping while still in your means.
Desired fertility is higher than actual fertility.
From that same study, you need to acknowledge that many women also REGRET having kids or too many kids.
"“excess” births have a larger unhappiness effect than “missing” births individually,"
Also, from that same study, which basically proves my original point:
"Many factors influence Canadian women in having fewer children than they desire, but the most influential factors relate to the ideas that children are burdensome, that parenting is intensive and time-consuming, and that women want to finish self-development and exploration before having children. The view that parenting is demanding is a bigger factor for low fertility than is housing or childcare costs."
Literally, the study being reported says that housing and childcare costs are NOT the biggest factor. Exactly as I said.
I wish you guys downvoting would at least read the damn study before shooting the messenger.
"I'm comfortable, surely everyone else is then."
Here's a radical thought: Maybe people simply don't want to be burdened by kids.
The studies cited in the op-ed show many people who want kids aren't having them due to the cost of living.
Maybe then we can start normalizing the fact that not everyone actually wants (or needs) kids.
Definitely, that would be healthy for people and more environmentally sustainable.
The op-ed is not referring to people who don't want kids, however, it's looking at surveys where people say they can't afford to have kids.
The studies cited in the op-ed show many people who want kids aren’t having them due to the cost of living.
That's not true. The study cited expliciitaly states that:
"... the most influential factors relate to the ideas that children are burdensome, that parenting is intensive and time-consuming, and that women want to finish self-development and exploration before having children. The view that parenting is demanding is a bigger factor for low fertility than is housing or childcare costs."
The op-ed is not referring to people who don’t want kids...
Fair point, but it is basing the op-ed on a survey that does refer to women who did not want kids, and when you consolidate the data, it's pretty clear that there's some reporting bias at play.
Still, to the point, cost of living is not the driving factor to low fertility.