What You Can Do

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How can you lower the birth rate?

  1. Have a small family – in terms of the number of children you choose to have, “consider having none or one and be sure to stop at two”.

    About 20 percent of the world’s population consumes 70 percent of the world’s material resources and possesses 80 percent of its wealth.  The majority of this 20 percent is located in wealthy nations, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan[i]. For this reason, every person who has a child in a wealthy nation has the equivalent environmental impact as a person having numerous children in an undeveloped country.

    Click on the following link to read "Conservation through having Smaller Families"PDF document(1.1Mb). It is a wonderfully simple illustrated document that outlines why having smaller families is vital in helping achieve nature conservation outcomes.
  2. Support family planning services in Australia and Internationally (www.arha.org.au)
  3. Write a letter to the Federal Minister for Families
  4. Write a letter to your Member for Parliament
  5. Make an appointment to see your Member for Parliament
  6. Write a letter to your local council (Mayor or councillor)
  7. Write a letter to the Editor of a newspaper when related stories are published


Use the following points in your letter or mention them in your visit to your local member:

  • There are plenty of non-coercive things that could be done. Experience in the third world shows three things are vital:
    1. Access to and information about contraceptives.
    2. The ability of women to decide their own future, including the number of children.
    3. High health levels and low death rates of those children. In Australia this means putting money back into family planning clinics. Parenting courses in schools. Better sex education and access to contraceptives. Spending more on children's health and welfare services. Encouraging girls to pursue their education and careers further. Launching a "Two Will Do" campaign, making it clear that large families are not economically necessary or environmentally desirable to the nation.
  • Choose a small family. With relation to the number of children each person should have, SPA advocates to “consider having none or one and be sure to stop at two”.
  • SPA also recommends that Australia adopts social and taxation policies e.g. maternity allowances, that allow couples to provide adequately for their children but at the same time discourages them from having more than two children. That also means not having taxation policies such as “baby bonuses” that encourages people to have more children.
  • All sorts of financial discouragements to large families are made by other countries' governments. Hopefully, none of them will be needed if we start on the softer options soon.

[i] WWF, World Wildlife Fund 2005

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