Maybe, just maybe it shouldn’t cost close to 10k to even TRY to have a kid through IVF? More like 15k out of pocket costs till the Medicare rebate anyway.
1 in 6 aussie couples will struggle with infertility whilst 1 in 20 kids is born of IVF. https://monashivf.com/one-in-six/
1 in 6 couples. 1 in 20 babies. You can see a fair gap here. Unless your comfortably “middle class”, you screwed. yes there are some public clinics with no gap, but the wait times are staggering. If we’re worried about falling birth rates FULLY funding IVF and fertility treatments through Medicare is a no brainer.
Not an Australian but I bet good money it is the exact same reason as everywhere else in the west: people have no time, no money, no social services, and really bad future perspectives with the ecosystem going to shit and capitalism running the world into the ground.
People need time to raise kids, people need money to afford kids, kids need education and attention. Provide those things, and provide a not-bleak perspective for the future, and people will be happy to have kids again.
That and the fact that women are still penalized in the workplace for having babies.