Fertility rates are dropping, but not among older women – and that creates a ripple effect | Canada Voices

A country’s birth rate can have profound effects on many economic indicators, such as future growth, the unemployment rate, immigration policy and future contribution rates to the Canada Pension Plan.

Everyone knows that Canada’s total fertility rate – the number of births a woman will have over her lifetime – has been dropping steadily for a long time. According to Database Earth, it has fallen to 1.33 in 2025 from 3.37 in 1950. Things get more interesting when we focus on women at specific ages.

The chart shows that for every 1,000 27-year-old women who were born in 1940, there were 152 births. (These births would have occurred in 1967.) By comparison, the birth rate of 27-year-old women in 2022 was just 68 per 1,000, a drop of more than half.

What is less expected is that older women have higher annual birth rates that they used to. The birth rates for 37-year-old women have been climbing for decades, and today the rate is near triple what it was in 1977.

It is reasonable to expect that this cohort of women will retire a little later because when they reach age 60 they will still have children in their early 20s. We can also expect that their saving patterns will be different. Their “crunch years,” when there are spending needs like daycare, will start later, so they need to be saving more very early in their careers.

The figures in the chart come from the latest actuarial report on the Canada Pension Plan. The final data point for 32-year-old women and the final two data points for 37-year-old women are projections.

Frederick Vettese is former chief actuary of Morneau Shepell and author of the PERC retirement calculator (perc-pro.ca)