Rising fertility rate surprises a nation
Gen Y women start baby boom
OTTAWA — First came the baby boom. Then came the echo. Now, Canada is experiencing the echo of the echo.
For the first time in 50 years the number of children aged four and under is increasing everywhere in Canada, according to new census data released Tuesday — a boomlet of babies born to the children of the baby boomers.
The four-and-unders increased 11 per cent between 2006 and 2011 — the highest growth rate for this age group since the end of the baby boom.
Demographeran deconomist david foot calls it the forgotten story of the census.
“Everyone is concentrating on aging and 65 and over, and that’s a non-story,” said the Boom, Bust and Echo author, adding that Canada is younger than most countries. “But the zero-to-four group is a story. “Statistics Canada says the toddler boom is related to a twin phenomenon: an increase in the nation’s fertility rate, as well as an increase in the number of women aged 20 to 34 — women who belong to the generation known as Generation Y or the “echo of the baby boom.”
These are the grandchildren of the boomers, Foot said — “The 60-year-old boomer has a 30-year-old daughter who is now starting a family.
“This is the echo of the echo,” he said. “This was predictable, but no one was anticipating it.”
He said it isn’t a blip, but rather the start of a true trend that has very little to do with rising fertility.
In 2001, Canada’s fertility rate stood at about 1.5 children per woman.
It’s now close to 1.7 — a rise too small, Foot said, to explain this trend.
It also pales in comparison with the average number of children — 3.7 — born per womanduringtheactualbaby-boomperiod following the Second World War.
The increase in babies and toddlers is also occurring in all provinces and territories — suggesting, again, that it’s not a one-off blip, observers say.
Sweetman said it could be an issue
“This was predictable, but no one was anticipating it.”
— David Foot, author of Boom, Bust and Echo
of timing — “that people are deciding that they’re going to have their one kid, but they’re going to have their one kid younger” — a function of the recession — “maybe they were unemployed and decided, ‘I’m going to have my kid now’ — or a total fertility change.
“It’s a significant change if it continues.”
Foot says the peak of the echo births happened in 1991.
“They’re now 21. You have your first kid, on average, around age 30,” he said, meaning that, over the next decade, there will be increasing numbers of babies born as the echo generation moves into their prime reproductive years.
That could have important implications for how money is allocated within schools and hospitals, Foot said. “A logical society would take money away from colleges and universities and allocate it to daycare,” he said.
“If there’s going to be more births, you don’t close down maternity wards.”
It could ultimately mean growing elementary-school enrolment.