Canada's birthrate hits record low

'It's the revenge of the birth control pill,' economist says of decade-long decline

BYLINE: LEAH SCHNURR

The Canadian birthrate continued its decade-long decline in 2002 with the lowest rates ever recorded, says a Statistics Canada report.

"I'm not the least bit surprised, said University of Toronto economics professor David Foot. "It's the revenge of the birth control pill."

The crude birthrate, or number of live births for every 1,000 people, has decreased by 25.4 per cent over the past 10 years, said the report, released yesterday.

It has been in steady decline for the past 12 years, except for a slight recovery in 2001. A total of 328,802 babies were born in 2002, a decline of 1.5 per cent from the previous year.

Author of 1996's Boom, Bust and Echo, a book on Canadian demographics, Foot said better contraception was responsible for fewer children being born in the 1960s and 1970s, meaning there are now fewer women of child-bearing age. However, as the children of baby boomers grow older over the next five years, he expects the birthrate to begin increasing again.

Statistics Canada demographer Alain Belanger expects low birthrates to have more long-term effects, saying we will see the average age of the population increase - not because people are living longer, but because fewer babies are being born.

In the long term, we will see more deaths than births, to the point where "the age pyramid is not a pyramid any more," he said, adding the result will be fewer people in the workforce, increasing stress on our social services.

The report also looked at the fertility rate, the average number of children women have in their lifetime, and found that it fell, declining from 1.51 children per woman in 2001 to 1.50 in 2002. A record low of 1.49 was set in 2000.

Nunavut had the highest fertility rate at 3.04, and Saskatchewan had the highest rate of the provinces at 1.82. Newfoundland and Labrador had the lowest fertility rate at 131.

Saskatchewan also had the lowest live birth rate, falling 4.2 per cent, making it the biggest decrease across the nation.

Alberta had the biggest jump in the birth rate, increasing by 2.8 per cent. Ontario (1.47) and Quebec's (1.46) birth rates continued to decline as they have for four of the past five years, with their statistics accounting for 89 per cent of the net decrease for the country. British Columbia's rate (1.38) also decreased, as it has for the past five years.

The report stated Canada's fertility rate "falls more or less midway" between the rates of other industrialized nations.

Foot, however, said Canada's rate is better than many other developed countries, with the exception of the United States.

Foot said while our fertility rate is below the level needed to replace the preceding generation, which would be 2.1 children per woman, our immigration policy means the population is unlikely to fall within 20 years.

"It would be a bigger concern if we didn't have a substantial immigration policy to compensate," Foot said.

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on population, reproductive health & ethics