{"id":900817,"date":"2026-09-22T03:14:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T03:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/900817\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T03:14:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T03:14:13","slug":"educated-migrants-will-soon-be-vital-australia-will-need-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/900817\/","title":{"rendered":"Educated migrants will soon be vital. Australia will need them"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a few decades, migration will be literally the only thing growing our population. This is one of the key findings of the government\u2019s latest intergenerational report<\/a>, which projects the outlook for the Australian economy and budget to 2065\u201366. <\/p>\n

A key headline you may have seen is that deaths are set to overtake births, leaving immigration as the chief way we can increase our population.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Will Australia have enough migrants? It sounds like an absurd question for anyone who remembers the 20th century. But the next part of the 21st century will be different, with the current politics of migrant fear and migrant-blaming careening towards a new global demographic reality where migrants will be scarce, vital and in hot demand.<\/p>\n

Alongside productivity (improving the amount of useful outputs from fewer inputs) and participation (the share of people who work), increasing population is one of three tools we can use to grow the economy. Much depends on the assumption that we can have the migrants we want. History suggests we can; we have always been a desirable destination. But is that enough?<\/p>\n

Rich and poor countries alike have seen falling fertility rates \u2014 the number of children per woman over their lifetime \u2014 with only two countries having seen notable rises since the year 2000: Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Those two are strange exceptions that have seen major cultural change since the collapse of the Soviet Union (the Russians left and the remaining locals celebrated by procreating).<\/p>\n

\tIndependent. Irreverent. In your inbox<\/p>\n

\n Get the headlines they don\u2019t want you to read. Sign up to Crikey\u2019s free newsletters for fearless reporting, sharp analysis, and a touch of chaos. <\/p>\n

By continuing, you agree to our\u00a0Terms & Conditions<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even the poorest countries have falling fertility. Angola\u2019s fertility rate is five, but it was almost eight in the 1990s. Falling fertility is not minor, not temporary and not local; it\u2019s a major global phenomenon.\u00a0The world\u2019s population is going to stop growing this century, and the timing of the peak keeps getting brought closer. Most recently it was wound back from 2100 to 2084, but that depends on fertility rate assumptions that are already outdated.<\/p>\n

Australia is small and brings in only a few hundred thousand migrants each year, so it\u2019s probable that we will be able to access people. The most educated people, however, will be in hot demand. As the intergenerational report boasts, \u201cThe government is reforming the permanent migration points test to better target skilled, younger and more highly educated migrants and improve recognition of migrant skills.\u201d <\/p>\n

Of course we are. But migrants with maths and medical degrees will soon find themselves being showered with green cards, migration points, etc. They may have their pick. Refugees, perhaps especially climate refugees, will still be available. But that\u2019s not what feeds the economic engine.<\/p>\n

Academic research has shown that high birth rates are a determinant of \u201cout-migration\u201d: the process of people permanently leaving a place in order to live in another place. In the 21st century, the supply of migrants will fall for the following reasons.<\/p>\n

Countries from whom we draw migrants are richer: Poverty spurs people to flee. Growing opportunity entices them to stay. As India\u2019s GDP per capita rises and its poverty tumbles, the number of people who want to leave shrinks. The number of those who are educated shrinks even more. There are more and more good jobs in India for an educated person.<\/p>\n

As fertility tumbles, there are fewer young people in these enormous populations: In 2006, the number of 18-year-olds in China was 25 million. In 2025, it was around 17 million.\u00a0India\u2019s ranks of 18-year-olds are shrinking too.<\/p>\n

Research shows big families drive out-migration: The fifth kid knows there won\u2019t be a big inheritance for them, so they strike out for greener pastures. Research<\/a> shows notably higher out-migration rates for countries with fertility rates above six. (Fun fact: the same research explains that France was highly advanced among European nations in having its fertility rate fall around 1750. This is probably why French is not our lingua franca. The Brits had much higher fertility for another 150 years and sent far, far more migrants abroad, cementing English as the world\u2019s language.)<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s decline in births, meanwhile, is not about a rise in childlessness. It\u2019s about families not having three children. The share of women who do eventually have a kid is pretty stable. What is different is that by starting later, there\u2019s not always time to have a second child, and rarely time or inclination for a third. Any local fertility-lifting program would have to aim to help families have kids at younger ages. Another complex challenge!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a few decades, migration will be literally the only thing growing our population. This is one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,353020,82786,9281,468310,127646,44,127647],"class_list":["post-900817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fertility-rates","tag-global-population","tag-immigration","tag-intergenerational-report","tag-migration-policy","tag-news","tag-skilled-migrants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}