By Katie Davis T he Australian Bureau of Statistics predicts within a decade that childless couples will become the coun- try’s most common family type as young Aussies spend their cash on travel and restaurants instead of having babies and settling down. The bureau is predicting that the nation’s traditional family unit with families having kids and settling down and living in a 3-bedroom house in the suburbs would become a minority. Stating that if the current trend continues over the next two decades there will be over one million more childless couple families’; than those with kids by 2036. The reason for this change is simple; Australia’s ageing population and couples delaying kids or choosing not to have them at all as a rebellion by the millennial generation to follow a different type of lifestyle than their parents and generations before them. While such trends may raise long-term fears of a shrinking population and slower economic growth, most analysts do not think that it will happen because of Australia’s strong level of immigration will ensure the population keeps growing and this trend will revise. The Reserve Bank of Australia is hoping that is true as one of its major current concerns is the record level of house- hold debt in Australia, which currently represents 189 percent of gross domestic product for the nation. With housing markets in major cities like Sydney and Melbourne seeing major increases, should interest rates rise, consumer spending could plunge as Millennials forgoing kids and mortgages to keep their current consumption lifestyle. This new trend is not all about economics, as there is also concerns by the bureau that when these childless couples get older they will face increased isolation, with fewer kids around, and that will have to be addressed by government.
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • JUNE 2017
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