The birthrate in B.C. is dropping with data from Stats Canada indicating there were more than 2,000 fewer births in the province between 2021 and 2022.
There were 41,833 babies born in B.C. last year, which is one of the lowest rates in more than 15 years.
Sarah Erskine, an analyst with Stats Canada, told Global News all provinces across Canada, with the exception of Nova Scotia, saw a decline in birth rates from 2021 to 2022.
“It’s about a five-per cent decline across Canada and similar figures for British Columbia,” she said.
“It’s probably the biggest decline that we’ve seen in a single year in quite some time. It’s kind of reverting to the trends since before the pandemic. We saw a decrease in 2020 because, well, perhaps because of the pandemic and we saw another increase in 2021 and 2022.”
Sarah Dow-Fleisner, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at UBC Okanagan, said there are a few reasons why this decline is happening.
One of them is the rising cost of living and the lack of housing in B.C.
“We have so many young people in that 20 to 25 range who are unable to afford housing on their own and are actually returning back to their parent’s homes,” Dow-Fleisner said. “That’s going to change their reproductive decisions, their family decisions.”
Another reason is access to child care and affordable child care.
“The new bill that limits the costs to $10 a day is fantastic, but the availability of child care remains a consistent issue,” Dow-Fleisner added.
“They recommend that within the first few weeks of pregnancy to put your child on a waitlist in order to have child care when they’re one year old. That’s a huge problem and that’s going to shape how people make decisions around having children.”
She said another reason centres around the desire for women to be in the labour force and being unwilling to take time off to have children.
“For every child that you have, that’s time that you take off from work and that’s impacting the way that people decide how many kids they’re going to have.”
Dow-Fleisner also said that women are reevaluating their role in society.
“I think more often than not, we’re seeing that sort of the rhetoric around the purpose of a woman or the purpose of a person with a uterus is just to have children is waning and it’s getting pushed back on,” she said.
“So more people are really embracing the idea of their bodily autonomy and being outspoken.”
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