Canada’s fertility rate hits record low, says statistics agency

Canada’s fertility rate hit a historic low in 2022, according to the latest report from Statistics Canada.

This most recent data shows that on average two years ago, the rate was 1.33 children per woman. According to Don Kerr, a demographer who teaches at King’s University College and Western University, this is down significantly from in the 1960s, when women were having, on average, four children.

Kerr points out the dropping rate is not necessarily a bad thing, and that, given climate change, regulating the world’s population has its benefits.

“Global population should stabilise, start declining sometime later this this century,” he said. “So, I mean, we can’t grow indefinitely, right? It’s just not sustainable to have a population of 12 billion, 15 billion, 20 billion. We have to stabilise eventually.”

Dropping fertility rates also underscore how unaffordable it is to have a family.

“In your latter 20s… you have a one bedroom apartment in Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal or whatnot, one of the more expensive cities, and you want to have kids, you’ve got to find yourself a two-bedroom apartment,” he said. “At least over the last couple years, rents have gone up dramatically.”

Between 2021 and 2022, the fertility rate fell 7.4 per cent, which is the largest observed drop since the baby bust in the early 1970s, according to the report. Rates dropped in all age groups of women less than 40.

The rate dropped steadily between 2009 and 2019, but this was followed by three “relatively volatile” years, with first a large drop, followed by an increase before it fell again. According to the report, this pattern matches a worldwide trend, suggesting the COVID-19 pandemic played a role.

“Given the COVID-19 pandemic initiated a period of public health crisis, as well as economic and societal shocks, it is possible that a segment of the population responded to this period of widespread uncertainty via their childbearing choices,” the statistics agency said. “In an effort to identify potential behavioural responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as a postponement and subsequent rebound of births, year-over-year changes in the monthly number of births are analyzed and compared with data from other countries.”

Kerr says it is unlikely for rates to increase to the rates seen more than 50 years ago.

“Most recently… it’s sort of been steadily declining,” he said. “The question I asked, and many people might be concerned with, is whether or not that downward trajectory is going to continue.”