Covid-19: New population policy required to combat effects of declining birth rate, ageing population – Stuff.co.nz

OPINION: In March 2020, New Zealand officially became a nation of 5 million people (with another 1 million offshore).

The country had been growing at a brisk pace, around 2 per cent per annum. The addition of another million was reached in a record time of 17 years.

For the first part of those 17 years, fertility and natural increase was still the most important contributor to population growth.

But in the last seven years, it was net migration gains 330,000 additional New Zealanders between 2013 and 2018 that was responsible for two-thirds of that growth.

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New Zealand is becoming a very different country. By 2030, we will be much older, more ethnically diverse, and more of us will live in Auckland and Hamilton and Tauranga.

The baby boomers (currently aged between 56 and 74) will see the numbers aged 65 and over doubling to 1.2 million. In the 1980s, less than 10 per cent of the population were over 65. Soon it will be close to a quarter.

This was underscored by their vulnerability under Covid-19, especially given their concentration in care facilities.

As we have moved from a young-dominant society to one that is now old-dominant, declining fertility has also played its role.

To replace an existing population, a fertility rate of 2.1 children per women is required. New Zealands rate is now 1.8. We are experiencing sub-replacement fertility.

This decline is compounded by the one (child) and done or none fertility decisions of millennials, and babies increasingly have mothers that are thirty-something. We have more children born to women over the age of forty than to teenagers.

All the indications are that Covid will see a further drop in fertility rates. Recent research in Europe suggests that about two-thirds of those at an age to decide whether to have children or not are choosing to delay pregnancy or not to have children at all.

Does it matter that there is an inversion of the classical pyramid population shape of a country? It depends.

There will certainly be an impact on dependency ratios, between those in the paid workforce and those who do not work (the young, the old, those reliant on a benefit).

The challenge becomes one of generating a tax or wealth base to support dependents.

The other issue is the willingness and ability of New Zealand to adjust to a very different demography.

The reluctance to talk about the sustainability of a universal superannuation scheme is one indication that we are not taking the changes to our demography seriously enough.

Abigail Dougherty/Stuff

After years of exodus to Australia, net migration has increased by up to 70,000 permanent migrants since 2012.

One of the default positions has been immigration. Often, our immigration policy has been one of the most important elements of our population policy; sometimes, our main one.

After the outflow of New Zealanders in 2012, mainly to Australia, the country then embarked on a period of significant net migration gains.

The annual net gain ranged from 50,000 to 70,000 permanent migrants, the majority under the Skilled Migrant Category. But there were also 200,000 temporary arrivals on work or study visa provisions.

When New Zealand went into lockdown, there were 310,000 migrants in the country on such visas. New Zealand has gained skills, people and diversity as a result of this recent period of migration.

Covid has bought this period to a grinding halt, although one of the ironies of how well New Zealand has handled the pandemic, and how poor other countries have not, is that the country will now be even more desirable as a migrant destination.

Even with the halt to migration, New Zealands ethnic diversity will continue to change, with the most obvious result being that, soon, one out of every five of us will be a member of one of the many Asian communities that now call New Zealand home.

In Auckland, these communities will comprise 38 per cent of the city.

Which introduces another important component of our changed demography: the growing dominance of Auckland.

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Auckland will receive around 60 percent of population growth over the next 20 years, writes Professor Paul Spoonley.

We anticipate that Auckland will be the recipient of 60 per cent of New Zealands population growth over the next two decades, and home to 40 per cent of New Zealands population.

This growing concentration can be seen in many countries and could be dampened but it will need some serious policy interventions by New Zealand governments.

The downside is that many other parts of the country will experience population stagnation and, in some cases, decline.

All these elements declining fertility, rapid ageing, the growth of Auckland (and regional population stagnation/decline), growing ethnic diversity all need policy attention and innovation.

These changes are so unprecedented that much of our existing policy framework is simply not fit for purpose.

It would help if we had an agreed population policy, and a greater public awareness of how significant and disruptive these changes are going to be.

Distinguished Professor Paul Spoonleys new book, The New New Zealand: Facing Demographic Disruption (Massey University Press) will be published next week.

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Covid-19: New population policy required to combat effects of declining birth rate, ageing population - Stuff.co.nz