I say use all third children for medical experiments

Democritus

Even with a birthrate of 1.8, and net zero immigration, our population would continue to grow substantially. The individual fertility rate and national fertility rate are quite different, simply due to the large proportion of women who are having babies. If our age-distribution structure was typical of a stable population, the two fertility-rate measures would be about the same. But with high immigration that is strongly biased towards young people, the measures are quite different.

About one third of our current population growth is made up of births in excess of deaths, and two thirds from immigration, very roughly speaking.

So your assertion that we would need significant immigration to make up numbers in order to stop population decline with our current birthrate is fundamentally incorrect.

“Tied to the correlation between high incomes and declining birth rates, a baby tax is a tax on the less well off and likely to be counter productive.”

A baby tax would affect those who are less well off more so than the wealthy. But would that be a bad thing? Those who are less well off are less able to provide for their kids, yes?...very broadly generalising.

Why aren’t you strongly opposed to the baby bonus? This awful piece of bribery provides one-off payments, which are much more significant for the less well off. These payments only go a short way towards providing for the child, and indeed they don't have to be spent on the child at all.

The less well off then have to provide for a child, or an extra child or two or three extra kids that they wouldn’t have had otherwise, on a low income. This is surely much worse than financial incentives to have less kids.

Quick response “It's not such a big leap or logistical exercise for our taxation system to be redesigned to reward taxpayers with the smallest carbon footprints with rebates whilst surcharges are imposed on selfish people who remain heavy gas emitters.

Wasteful and excessive consumption patterns can be targeted with smart policy choices that put the pain of re-adjustment where it should be – decisions on family size will find its own equilibrium.”

I would have thought, when I look at the social resources consumed in employing public servants to supervise the upbringing of neglected children that the “Wasteful and excessive consumption patterns” was a result of decisions on family size in the first place.

“Decision” is maybe too strong a word, usually it is the lack of conscious “decision” and more a momentary response to unbridled lust accompanied by a desire to avoid responsibility for the consequences (procreation).

Hence, my suggestion that tying social support to some form of “unavoidable” (cannot be circumvented) contraception is in the best interests of the world, especially the children whose experience of life is so limited and blighted by the in-attendance of their parents or inability of those parents to properly support them.

So unless you can think of some way in which the “challenged”, indolent and or neglectful, despite having limited resources from lack of income are taxed for their irresponsible procreation and absentee children (being removed and made wards of the state) I think it is wholly inappropriate for you to presume all “blame” be placed at the feet of the responsible folk who use extra electricity to bathe their own kids (instead of the kids being bathed in some remote and unaccounted for foster home).

That is the problem with a “Quick Response”, it often fails the test of scrutiny compared tp a suggestion based on fuller consideration of the real issues.

Ludwig,

Obviously maths isn't your strong point. A birth rate of 2.1 is needed to replace the population. An average of less than this over an extended period will without fail mean a drop in population.

As the average in Aus for the past 40 odd years is in the order of 1.8, the population excluding immigrants has dropped. Aus does not need birth control.

As for the tax on the poor, I can see that as a real vote winner in any country.

Democritus, consider this;

The population growth rate in Australia is considerably larger than the immigration rate.

So, how could this be if we had a below-replacement-level national birthrate?

Once again, the individual birthrate rate and the national fertility rate (or whatever names you want to give these two measures) are quite different things.

So I’ll leave it up to you to go research this, and to either confirm your belief or discover that I am right.

I’ll might also call on

**Colinsett

or

**Divergence

to explain this better than I have apparently been able to and to provide a link or two, as they are probably more inclined to spend time on this sort of thing than I am lately.

Ludwig,

The population growth figures on the dept of immigration website would tend to disagree with your statement. The figures show that immigration numbers approximately the same and for the last few years exceed the births in spite of the baby bonus.

If the natural population was staying constant the total growth rate would be in the order of 1.8% and that is not even including children born of immigrants. That the growth rate is about 1.2% would indicate that the natural population is not even sustaining itself.

A small investment in research would prove enlightening.