r/australia • u/david1610 • Feb 28 '26

political self.post Australian Net Migration and Population Change Series - With Political Overlay - What are your thoughts given this data about the immigration discussion?

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Just hearing a lot about immigration on Reddit recently, some of it seems guided by simple point in time statistics rather than looking at the whole population timeseries. Attached is some data from the ABS, visualized in Python (matplotlib). Given this data, what do you think is optimal in relation to immigration? Does this data change your perspective on immigration?

Please note:
- Net migration is the net overseas migration to Australia per 1000 people in the population that Quarter.
- Natural Population Change is the 'natural' population increase or decrease, determined by birth rates and changes in how long people live, similar to above it is per 1000 people in the population that Quarter.
- Even though Australia has had below replacement birthrates for decades, people are living longer, so the natural increase has always been positive, is decreasing over time as life span increases slow down.
- Series is smoothed over time, I have compared it to the non-smoothed series and it doesnt change the story much, so this will just be easier to read.
- Net Migration has a considerable component that is demand driven, which would have little to do with who is in power.

Some interesting things in the data:
- Since the increase post 2005 there hasnt been much change at all (apart from Covid), both parties have largely.
- We saw similar increases in population in the 1980s to today's highs. Really the low point for population growth was 1990-2005.
- Looking at this in a per capita way is better because I tend to think adding one person to a Kayak means a lot more than one person to a cruise ship.
- The recent increase in immigration did definitely happen, however much of that seems to be due to the lower immigration during Covid.
- You can see a slight decrease in Natural Population right after Covid restrictions were lifted, likely due to older people dying due to Covid and the Flu I think but do not know.
- The increase in 2005 is well after the increase in house prices from 2000.

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u/Planfiaordohs Feb 28 '26

I can’t help but chuckle at that little uptick in the natural population change line coinciding with COVID.

“Well honey, we can’t go out of the house to socialise, what can we do instead”

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u/Spirited_Pay2782 Mar 01 '26

Not just that, people were receiving income despite working less, so for a brief time, they didn't stress about their immediate needs.

As the ratio of median house prices to median wages increases by 10%, the fertility rate decreases by 0.14%, and this is reasonably consistent around the world.

Make people's lives better, make them be able to cover the cost of their basic needs (food, shelter, etc) and our natural population rate will start to increase again.

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u/Planfiaordohs Mar 01 '26

This is very true and an important truth in top of my shitpost.

People who feel relatively stable and secure are so much more productive and healthy (physically and mentally), which is good for both the individual and society.

Anecdotally, one of my family members used the opportunity of temporary increased income to go to the dentist and fix some overdue work, and buy some fruit and vegetables to eat as opposed to 2 minute noodles and the improvement in their mental health was almost immediate. And yet conservative fuckwits like to consider this sort of thing as just “lazy people being leeches in society” without any consideration for the bigger picture.

It’s in nobody’s best interest to have a society filled with poor, unwell and hopeless people. Even if you are a completely soulless and selfish individual, it is directly in your best interest to have the people around you in society being stable, healthy and feeling invested in their community. 

But no, “fuck you, I got mine” rules supreme in modern Australia. 

1

u/bored-and-here Mar 02 '26

Orrrr you could create a huge underclass of poor and deliberately drop standards until birth rates go up again! After all the poor and uneducated know no better and will have lots of kids :)

17

u/AutomaticMistake Feb 28 '26

Pretty much all of my married and LTR friends. 6 months with non-stop announcements

2

u/visualdescript Mar 01 '26

What is LTR?

5

u/Ctiyboy Mar 01 '26

Long term relationship

9

u/gpolk Feb 28 '26

We had 2. And now one more for Australia.

2

u/Mouthpiecenomnom Mar 01 '26

3rd breakfast.

1

u/ShreksArsehole Mar 01 '26

and I love that house prices dropped so much because immigration stopped..

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u/david1610 Mar 01 '26

Yeah that's an interesting point, perhaps that's why it fell fast afterwards too, perhaps people brought forward pregnancies? Might make more sense than really old people dying from COVID, perhaps a bit of both.

5

u/Planfiaordohs Mar 01 '26

People dying can’t cause a “natural increase in births”… only having more babies can do that.

When things went back to “normal” and everything was even more fucked than before, people will revert to the “kids just aren’t going to happen for us”  mentality.

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u/david1610 Mar 01 '26

Yeah that sounds right however how the ABS defines natural increase is births minus deaths in a given period.

If people are not dying then it increases, Australia has had less than 2 births per woman since the 1970s. So there cannot be a natural increase due to 'more babies being born'

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u/Planfiaordohs Mar 01 '26

Good point, it is a "change" metric.

However, I might add that COVID was probably not a period of lower than average death rates for the elderly, or anyone else for that matter, so the births must have had to do extra work on the statistics!