New Report Calls for Sweeping Pro-Family Reforms as Australia’s Birth Rate Hits Record Low
With Australia’s fertility rate at 1.48 and falling, a new policy report from the Page Research Centre calls for sweeping reforms to childcare, tax, housing and migration.
Australia’s fertility rate has fallen to 1.48 — and is projected to drop further — as a new policy report calls on government to treat family formation as a national priority demanding major structural reform.
Raising the Next Generation, released in February by the Page Research Centre, argues that Australia’s institutions have drifted out of alignment with the realities of family life.
The 54-page report, authored by Virginia Tapscott and Gerard Holland, proposes a coordinated reform agenda spanning five domains: early childhood, the motherhood penalty, cost of living, housing and migration.
“Families now feel that they lack the choice to pursue family life in the way they think will deliver the best outcomes for them and their children,” the report states.
Parental Choice Over Institutional Care
At the centre of the report’s early childhood agenda is a proposed Choice in Care Subsidy which would serve as a replacement for the existing childcare-only subsidy. The proposed scheme would be payable for parental care, kinship care, home-based arrangements and other alternative arrangements for children aged zero to three. The report argues the current system structurally privileges one mode of care over all others.
Government subsidies for institutional childcare are projected to reach $16.2 billion per year by 2026, while parental and home-based care receive almost no equivalent support. “The current system does not give families real choice,” the report concludes.
On the question of child mental health, the report’s findings are stark: at least one in seven Australian children now has a diagnosable mental health disorder. Anxiety diagnoses have doubled among adolescents over the past decade, and suicide is now the leading cause of death among 15–19-year-olds.
The report connects these trends to rising stress exposure in infancy and reduced access to stable, consistent care.
Addressing the Motherhood Penalty
The report documents what it calls the “motherhood penalty” — the high economic price women pay for having children.
Treasury analysis cited in the report finds women with children work about one-third fewer hours and earn around 55% less in the first five years after having a child. Even a decade later, mothers’ earnings remain roughly 40% below pre-child levels. A typical 25-year-old Australian woman who becomes a mother is projected to earn about $2 million less over her lifetime than a man who becomes a father.
The report proposes wiping 25% of a mother’s outstanding HECS-HELP debt per child on birth, and a child-linked income tax reduction of 25% per dependent child until the child turns 16. An ATO-administered superannuation credit for caregiving periods would address the retirement savings gap.
“Tax and retirement systems treat families as atomised individuals, not caregiving units,” the report argues.
It also calls for a child-centric framework that includes default flexible work arrangements, enforceable part-time rights, father-inclusive leave, and funded re-skilling pathways for parents returning to work.
Housing and the Cost of Family Life
The report identifies housing affordability as a serious constraint on family formation.
Australia’s median dwelling now exceeds eight times median household income — up from around five times two decades ago. Only around 36% of Australians under 35 own their own home, down from over 60% in the late 1980s. It now takes young people until their mid-thirties to purchase their first home, compared to the mid-twenties a generation ago.
The report calls for a review of tax settings that amplify speculative demand, with the aim of redirecting capital toward new housing supply. For older Australians, it proposes targeted downsizing incentives — a temporary exemption from the Age Pension assets test for downsizers, and stamp duty credits on the purchase of a smaller principal residence.
A proposed Building Australia Fund, meanwhile, would allow downsizers to invest released equity into government-backed infrastructure without incurring capital gains penalties.
Migration Reform
The report confronts migration policy directly, arguing that high migrant inflows have served as a quick fix that’s failing to address the underlying drivers of low fertility.
Net overseas migration averaged around 370,000 per year from 2022 to 2025 — more than four times the pre-2005 baseline. Housing supply, however, has not kept pace. Only 177,000 new dwellings were completed in 2024 against estimated demand of closer to 223,000.
“Migration can complement national growth, but it cannot substitute for family formation,” the report states. It calls for staged reductions to the permanent migration program, a phasedown of international student enrolments, tighter enforcement of temporary visa work conditions, and restricting skilled lists to true shortages in health, trades and engineering.
A Coherent System
Australia’s fertility rate fell to 1.48 in 2024 — well below the replacement rate of 2.1 required for long-term population stability — and is forecast to fall further to 1.42 in 2025–26.
The report argues the fertility decline is not primarily cultural but structural: “When caregiving is financially penalised, time with children is economically unaffordable, and the conditions for family life are unstable, individuals adapt by delaying or limiting childbearing.”
The report draws on international experience — particularly Hungary’s pro-family strategy, which coincided with a 24% rise in fertility and a 50% fall in abortion rates between 2010 and 2024, alongside sharp increases in marriage — as evidence that policy can ultimately shift behaviour.
The report’s full policy summary calls for 18 specific measures across its five reform areas.
“By supporting families to form earlier, raise children with stability, and maintain long-term economic security,” it argues, “this agenda strengthens the foundations of productivity, social cohesion and national resilience.”
“It positions family life as it should be — a shared national priority worthy of deliberate, structural support.”
The full report is available at the Page Research Centre’s website.
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Image courtesy of Unsplash.
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Children grow up more secure when cared for by their mother rather than by childcare centres. The expectation of all mothers to return to work once they have had their babies is unrealistic and a pressure they do not need to bear . There’s so much work to do in a family home without having to go to work to earn the money. Even as the children grow older into teenage years, the work goes on and on and on and even in the older teenage years , when they are all still at home, learning to be a bit independent, but still living in the home,women should be free to care for their family and their home in the way in which they choose .Many of us choose not to engage in paid work as our husbands are more secure and feel loved if our home is in order and our family is cared for and running well.. Women need to be free to support their husbands to achieve their dreams. For many of us in small business it was a husband and wife team effort. In my case our business would not have survived had I been forced to return to other paid work. not only would my husband‘s business not have survived, he would have suffered and so would the children have suffered. while I received no pay in the initial years and very little pay once established ,the family unit held together and the business was successful for 35 years, with a financial reward at the end because we had learn to make profit. I had to change careers from school teacher to bookkeeper and work from home. Suited me down to the ground.
Many marriages do not survive this challenge. This year we celebrate 40 years of marriage.
We were older getting married to begin with, so we had worked, both of us, in the workplace for 11 years in my case, and for 20+ years in my husband’s case ,before we had a family.
Everyone’s situation is different and the world is now a very different place to the 1980s but I’m glad I made the choice to look after my children myself.. I would not have waited all this time to have children only to have someone else raise them. thankfully, I did receive some support from family tax benefit while raising my three children all born within a four year period.
Mothers are massively under-appreciated and under resourced. Mothers and motherhood has been denigrated since the 60’s with the rise of militant feminism. Other forces too have been at play. We must take a stand against them in Jesus Name!!! Both in prayer and practical policy. The team at Dads4Kids have been aware of this and tried to rectify it through TV campaigns to promote motherhood. Like this 60 second TV add called “Love You Mum” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GXxchO4otA