Statistics Canada, Canada’s government statistical agency, has announced that the nation’s Total Fertility Rate dropped to 1.26 in 2023. This is a reduction from 1.33 in 2022.
Statistics Canada supplies this definition for the TFR: “Total fertility rate is an estimate of the average number of live births a woman can be expected to have in her reproductive life if she experienced, at each age, the fertility rates observed in a given year.Like many Western and East Asian countries Canada's rate has been generally declining for over 15 years and reached a new low in 2023 of 1.26 children per woman. This decline from 2022 to 2023 mostly reflects an increase in the number of women of childbearing age in 2023, as the number of births was similar in both years.”
According to Statistics Canada: “Canada has now joined the group of "lowest-low" fertility countries, including South Korea, Spain, Italy and Japan, with 1.3 children per woman or less. In comparison, the total fertility rate for the United States was 1.62 per woman in 2023.”
Yue Qian, an associate professor in the University of B.C.’s sociology department, said the skyrocketing cost of living is clearly a factor in declining birthrates here and across Canada.”
“There is research showing that fertility rates are closely related to housing,” said Qian, with birthrates higher in cities with more available and more affordable homes.
Provincial and Territorial TFRs
The Statistics Canada release included TFRs for the second level governments, the 10 provinces and three territories.
Nunavut, a largely impoverished and lightly populated territory that was separated from the Northwest Territories in 1999, is the only second level jurisdiction in Canada with a TFR above the population rate (2.1 births per woman), at 2.48. Nunavut is very sparsely populated, with 37,000 residents in the 2021 census. The land area of Nunavut is over 800,000 square miles, about the same size of the states of Alaska and California combined. The northernmost point is on Ellesmere Island, less than 500 miles from the North Pole.
All of the other 12 Canadian jurisdictions have total fertility rates less than that of Nunavut. The provinces have the next highest TFRs. Saskatchewan has a TFR of 1.63, while neighboring Manitoba has a TFR of 1.52. The Northwest Territories has a TFR of 1.39, closely followed by Quebec.Maritime province New Brunswick has a TFR below the national rate (1.26), at 1.24.
Ontario, despite being a focus on recent immigration, has a TFR of 1.22 and has a very high cost of living, as the location of the second worst housing affordability crisis in the nation. The Toronto census metropolitan area had a median multiple (median house price divided by median household income) of 9.3 in 2023, more than double the 2005 figure, according to the Demographia International Housing Affordability report.
Prince Edward Island has a TFR of 1.16, followed by Newfoundland and Labrador at 1.08, Nova Scotia at 1.05 and Yukon at 1.01.
British Columbia, another major immigrant hub is also home to Canada’s worst housing crisis and a cost of living crisis, has the lowest TFR at 1.00. This is one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. If British Columbia were a country, it would have a TFR ranked 5th lowest in the world, behind Hong Kong, South Korea, Palau and Puerto Rico, according to World Bank data.
Canada, like most nations, is faced with a strongly declining Total Fertility Rate. This will be challenging for public officials at all levels of government to deal with, and there has been little success around the world in reversing TFRs that have become so low. That it is happening in a land rich, immigrant-friendly country like Canada demonstrates how deep-seated the fertility trends are in virtually all relatively prosperous countries.
Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.
Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.
Photo: Vancouver, largest city in British Columbia, which if it were a country would have the 5th lowest TFR in the world, by author.
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