Wellington’s not just in a baby drought - we’re in a kid drought too

Saturday, 9 November 2024

Wellington is not just in a baby drought. We’re in a kid drought too.

Census data shows that there were 5% fewer children under the age of 15 living in greater Wellington last year than there were in 2018.

That’s despite the total population of the region growing marginally ‒ by 2.8% ‒ over the same period.

In Wellington city, the decline in the child population over the last five years was even steeper, at 11%. Meanwhile, the city’s total population fell by just 0.2%, from 202,737 to 202,689.

At the same time, the birth rate in Wellington has been falling, both for the region and the city. In fact 2023 saw the lowest number of births in Wellington in 30 years.

Other regions, including main centres, have not seen the same level of decline in either birth rates, or children living there.

In fact, the number of children under the age of 15 has increased by 2% in the past five years in Auckland. In Hamilton, the population of kids rose by 6%.

Where did all the kids go? No one really knows.

But if you ask mum-of-two Shreya Joshi whether Wellington is still a good place to raise kids, you’ll get a resounding yes.

To her, Lower Hutt has been home ever since she moved to Aotearoa from India with her parents when she was 7. She loves the lifestyle.

Yet despite this, on Monday, Joshi is moving to Melbourne indefinitely with her 2-year-old son Sahaj and 6-year-old daughter Mira.

When they touch down they’ll be reunited with Siriam, who moved there several weeks before his whānau to start a new job in engineering project management.

The decision to relocate their young family had been a difficult one but ultimately came down to better career and schooling opportunities, Joshi said.

Joshi is a chartered accountant who has worked at Government agencies.

With so many public sector organisations making staff redundant there was no certainty, she said.

“We feel a little bit stagnant in our professional lives, not getting the pay we know we can get somewhere else.”

Unsure whether the move will be permanent, the couple have chosen to rent out their family home in the Hutt, leaving the door open for them to return one day.

“Being in our 30s now, I think we can really make a dent in our professional careers and come back and actually contribute something here on a bigger scale or with better positions,” Joshi said.

It’s not clear how many other young families who’ve left Wellington have crossed the ditch for good, as statistics tracking the migration of Kiwis to Australia are not broken down by region of departure, but it’s possible the trend is part of the wider brain drain.

The latest estimates from Stats NZ show that in total 39,600 New Zealand citizens moved from Aotearoa to Australia in the year to March.

For soccer dad Nureddin Abdurahman, the grass on which to raise children will always be greener and safer in Wellington compared with Ethiopia, he said.

'Last year, I went back to Ethiopia to see family, and kids were blocking roads to play futsal. I can't tell you how scary it was when children fell down.

Here in Wellington, his 12-year-old daughter Sumaya can play futsal and netball in the safety of Ākau Tangi Sports Centre in Kilbirnie.

“We don’t realise how lucky we are with community facilities … when you are a family you realise how important sports fields are.”

Abdurahman is also dad to Rayyan, 14 and Sufiya, 5, as well as a city councillor for the southern ward.

Referencing the US election and divisions in other countries, he said Wellington's diversity and the way people were “welcoming and embracing of each other” was under-rated.

“That's something we should always celebrate. It's easy to lose what we have when you don't realise what you have.”

City councillor Ben McNulty, who has a 4-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter, said Wellington's playgrounds, free pool entry for under-5s and nature reserves make it a great city for raising kids ‒ if you can afford to live here.

“You're seeing the reality of a city that's expensive. Young families and first home buyers have not been able to buy here and moved out into the regions.”

McNulty hoped that district plan changes, which allowed more housing and apartments to be built closer to the city, would attract the “yo-pro” market, who “eventually settle down”.

Statistics revealed the kid drought was not evenly spread across the region.

While it hit hardest in Wellington city, the number of children aged 0 to 14 also fell by about 2% in Lower Hutt, Porirua and on the Kāpiti Coast.

The respective child populations of Upper Hutt, Masterton and Carterton all grew slightly by between 1% and 3%.

South Wairarapa was the only part of the region where the number of children grew significantly ‒ up 6%. However, that was still out of proportion to the total population growth in the area, of nearly 12%.

Stats NZ principal analysis Dr Rosemary Goodyear, who specialises in the population, said governments and communities across the globe were struggling with the complex problem of declining numbers of children.

“There's some interesting debates about it … In Australia, they were giving people quite a generous sum if they had babies [like] a baby bonus. And there's been research done into that, and what it seemed to do is that affected the timing of births rather than the number of births that people have.”