Statistics Canada confirmed last week that 351,679 babies were born in 2022 — the lowest number of live births since 345,044 births were recorded in 2005.
The disparity is all the more notable given that Canada had just 32 million people in 2005, as compared to the 40 million it counted by the end of 2022. In 2005, it was already at historic lows for Canada to have a fertility rate of 1.57 births per woman. But given the 2022 figures, that fertility rate has now sunk to 1.33.
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Of Canadians in their 20s, Statistics Canada found that 38 per cent of them “did not believe they could afford to have a child in the next three years” — with about that same number (32 per cent) saying they doubted they’d be able to find “suitable housing” in which to care for a baby.
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A January survey by the Angus Reid Group asked women to list the ideal size of their family against its actual size, and concluded that the average Canadian woman reached the end of their childbearing years with 0.5 fewer children than they would have wanted
“In Canada, unlike many other countries, fertility rates and desires rise with income: richer Canadians have more children,” it read.
I would love to pump some baby batter into my gf and start having a kids, can’t do that while we’re stuck living paycheque to paycheque on a combined 130k in my parents basement.
Yeah fair XP. Apologies for totally disregarding the larger issue, bud. Didn’t mean to minimize one of our generational issues
Sorry but how are you living paycheck to paycheck with that income and little to no rent?
Without writing out my whole life story: student loans, unexpected vehicle issues (public transit isn’t an option where I live), out of pocket medical costs not covered by benefits or gov’t, long commutes with expensive gas and no feasible alternatives and few job opportunities closer to home in my field. Can’t afford to move due to high rents so I’m stuck driving.
There’s more but I’m hungry and wanna eat dinner and don’t feel like going into it. We save everything that isn’t essential and barely go out for fun, anything extra goes towards a down payment but the way things are going right not it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to buy for years unless we can put away like 2k a month.
I don’t know what province youre in but also the skyrocketing cost of food and groceries.
What I got a couple years ago with $100 doesn’t buy shit now a days.
Fuck our government both federal and provincial, and all parties. Fuck every politician that sits in parliament collecting a pretty 6 figure paycheque and watching their real-estate asset appreciate as Canadians get perpetually fucked over time and time again.
When people say pay cheque to pay cheque in this type of situation they’re still putting money away into savings typically but are out of reach of where they need to be. There’s usually large debts, medical costs or other financial burdens that aren’t mentioned like maybe taking care of a family member. Their pay cheque to pay cheque situation is a bit different than someone working minimum wage and will be out on the streets as they still have money going into some sort of savings
How bad is housing in Canada right now? This is not a prominent topic here in Europe, so let’s say you look for a 200 m² house in the outer parts of a bigger city, what would be the price for that?
Start with income perspective. The average annual salary in 2022 was just under $60,000. Nationally, the average house price in summer 2023 was a bit over $750,000. These incomes and house prices are affected pretty strongly by the lower incomes and lower housing costs in rural Canada vs the major cities like Vancouver and Toronto
So… shift attention to the cities. In Toronto and Vancouver, the average house price is around $1,200,000 give or take a little. You need at a combined income of least $280,000 to qualify for a house like that (or have substantial equity built up in previous home purchases). Most people are earning at or close to the national average… with a few - especially those in STEM careers (sw devs for example) up over $100,000 per year.
I live in a suburb city (I own my house)… it’s inconveniently located if you want/need to be in the core city centre for work (I’m about 3 hours commute right now if I needed to go in to a downtown office… thankfully I don’t). Houses on my street are relatively new (most built in 2019 and 2020). The houses currently for sale are listing between $1,250,000 and $2,350,000.
Renting can be really awful in Canada too… you get stunts like this https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/this-is-egregious-sisters-shocked-when-toronto-landlord-raises-rent-to-9-500-a-month-1.6548845 simply because they can…
tl;dr Housing in Canada is bonkers
Thanks for the insight, this is crazy. We are looking for houses right now here in Germany, and and the last one we visited was 269 m² for around 500.000€ and 30 minutes drive away of the inner city of the next major city. I hope politics does something about your problem, it can not stay like this.
The issue is that investors are buying houses 100k over asking price same or next day because they don’t plan on living in them, they just want to make the investment and prop up the housing market bubble for as long as they can.
Everything is worth what people will pay for it. The problem is that we aren’t building anywhere near enough housing.
I bought a townhouse that was 1700sqft (~150m^2) in Markharm, a suburb of the GTA (1hr to the center of toronto by car, 1.5hrs by bus), in a pretty bad area for 800K CAD during a slight market crash during covid. By all accounts this was an exceptionally good deal, by realtor didn’t think we could get anything for under 900. I sold that townhouse for 1.1 mil in 2023.
She does have an iud so I could before, but her Dr put her on medication for her rheumatoid arthritis last year that causes birth defects so at the moment we gotta double up. Even if that wasn’t the case, still couldn’t afford to have a kid right now.
Oof, well, no love baby juices for her.
Unless there was another hole where it could be injected 🤔
Oh hey! It’s literally describing my current situation.
Got engaged, got a promotion, have solid long term housing (“renting” from family)
Still can’t keep more than 1.5k in savings month over month. No way in hell in having a baby in these conditions… and i feel like I’m better off than most
Groceries and housing cost way too much for many people to make babies.
Costs too little, you mean. When housing and groceries are actually unaffordable, people have children to help grow food and prepare supplies for shelter. This is why birth rates are still quite high in poor countries and why birthrates fall off a cliff when people have plenty of resources readily available.
Please show me on the map where I can take my future family and farm the land on my theoretical meager wealth.
There is none.
We don’t live in a world where the average human can farm their own food meaningfully anymore. Not at scale at least. The lands been bought, built on, or industrialized for large scale crop harvest.
What you are proposing doesn’t work in most places on this planet anymore.
Lots and lots and lots of crown land that is more than suitable to provide for a family. If the people are not permitted to settle on that crown land… change that. Said land is literally owned by the people. The people can do whatever they want with it.
Only the super high productive land is used for large scale crops. You do not need anything of the sort to feed a family. You’re not becoming a farmer here. Farmers don’t need children. They have tractors.
Tax domestic speculators. It’s such an easy solution. It’s going to be painful because it’s been allowed to happen for so long. Canadians are doing this to other Canadians but no politician wants to do this to help end this gross cycle of exploitation, add in the fact provinces like Ontario that remove things like rent control and things become even further out of reach.
but no politician wants to do this
Because it’s political suicide. They have a Silver Tsunami coming up, and thanks to a) many companies weakening retirement plans (defined benefit? LOL), b) recessions wiping out people’s savings, there’s been a concerted shift to using home-ownership to bandage over old-age income security.
Prior to this, moderate investment and company pensions were enough to see you through, but that’s largely gone–just another part of our society that we sold off so that the rich can get more tax breaks. The cherry-on-top? We sold off LTCs to private companies, so elder-care is now a for-profit luxury.
The only way Boomers can retire is home equity. Heck, it’s the only thing fuelling our economy in general.
Of course, this is fixable: tax the rich. Pay for a society that works for everyone, not just Galen Weston or David Thompson. It would have been easier to do this back in the 1990s (before the problem really started in earnest) or before 2018 (when it got fully out of control) but it’s still possible.
Who the fuck is financially prepared for having children?
As a father of two, I sure as shit wasn’t.
Well, when your rent is 50% of your income and your food costs take up almost 30% of your income and your bills take up the remainder and you’re constantly one missed paycheck from homelessness and starvation and your family are in equally dire straits and so cannot bail you out - having children becomes entirely impossible.
You say you weren’t financially prepared, but evidently it was financially possible for you to have children. For at least half of my generation it just point blank is not possible.
