Summarised by Centrist

New Zealand’s fertility rate has fallen to 1.53 births per woman, well below the roughly 2.1 needed for a population to replace itself without migration.

Former ACT leader Rodney Hide argues the country is treating this as an interesting statistic rather than a fundamental economic and national problem.

“No group is replacing itself,” Hide writes, pointing to declining fertility across European, Māori, Pacific and Asian New Zealanders.

The immediate consequences are easy to ignore because migration can keep the population and workforce growing. But migration does not remove the underlying imbalance between a smaller generation of workers and a larger retired population requiring pensions and healthcare.

“A country that cannot replace itself has no long-term sovereignty,” Hide argues.

That claim is deliberately stark, but the fiscal problem is real. A shrinking tax base will eventually be expected to fund commitments designed when there were many more workers for every retiree.

NZ First has proposed responding with a tax-free Kiwi Kids Grant worth $5,000 annually for a child’s first three years, covering up to three children. That could deliver a family as much as $45,000.

The grant at least recognises the problem. But family formation is also affected by housing costs, insecure work, delayed marriage and a tax and welfare system that can make additional children financially punishing.

This is not an argument against immigration. It is a warning that immigration cannot substitute for making it realistic for New Zealanders to have the families they say they want.

Read more from Brash and Mitchell, Stats NZ and RNZ

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