Replacement level fertility is the number of babies a female would need to have over her reproductive life to replace both herself and her partner. Given the current mortality rates for women aged up to 49 years in Australia, replacement fertility is estimated to be 2.1 babies per woman. Since 1976, the total fertility rate for Australia has been below this replacement level. Even if female mortality declined to zero for women until the end of their reproductive lives, the replacement level would still be 2.05 (1.05 male and 1.0 female babies) – higher than the total fertility rate of 1.89 babies per woman for 2010.
In a nutshell, if you take immigration out of the equation, we actually have a declining population in Australia. Looks like Aussies are already doing their bit when it comes to population control
Personally it never really entered my mind to limit the number of children I had for this reason. If it had, I probably could have justified it by saying I was having my sister's share of children because she never wants to have her own, lol. With Australia's current fertility rate being only 1.89 children per woman, I guess one could argue that having 3, 4, 5, or more kids really is only "using up" someone else's allotment of children to replace adults (as a previous poster suggested is what is ecologically allowable...).
Yes, it was a consideration of ours. The planet can only carry so many humans. I guess this is on my mind more than most because I work with wildlife, but I just see it as a reality of living within a finite ecosystem. For what it is worth, no I am not enforcing population control on other people, and yes we do try to reduce our ecological footprint in other ways, including small fuel-efficient car, insulation, solar power, compost toilet, water tanks, vege patch etc. It is one part of the whole picture and I think it is really still a taboo subject for a lot of people.
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