Low birthrates in Australia’s biggest cities deepened in 2024 amid sustained cost-of-living pressures, dragging the national rate to a near-record low. The analysis also found outer-suburban and regional Australians grew increasingly likely to have higher numbers of children per person than their inner-city neighbours. Overall the country’s fertility rate, or children born per woman, was 1.51 in 2024, statistically similar to the 1.5 observed in 2023 and well below the rate of 1.8 observed a decade beforehand. In regional Australia, though, the total numbers of children born each year has risen over the last decade in absolute terms, despite falling in the capitals. “We’re still expecting to see … population fertility decline, until we start to arrest the factors that are driving that in terms of cost of living,” Davies said.