Just as the recent U.S. Census Bureau’s latest findings have generated much speculation as to the current and future social and financial trends in this nation, Australia also conducts its own official government census that gives interested observers a better look at the problems and solutions facing that nation in the coming decade.
According to the latest census data from down under, it appears that the city life there is highly attractive for singles under age 30, while families with children are flocking to suburbs in record numbers at the same time. Australia’s latest census data shows a distinct trend toward major urban areas full of city dwellers under age 30 who are free of children and wedding rings. At the same time, the Aussie census data also shows a real trend where Australian suburban and country counterparts are twice as likely to be married with a few children. The numbers show that nearly two-thirds of the women in the city of Sydney have never had any children at all, with the most recent numbers rising up to some 45,000 women, a figure that is up a full 10 percent within the past five years.
Looking a bit closer at the numbers from the city of Sydney show that two-thirds of women there have had at least one child compared to the average suburban Sydney family that has 1.9 kids. The census shows that children under 15 years old account for just 7 percent of the central city’s population, compared with the entire greater suburban Sydney area where 20 percent of the population is composed of children. Sydney is also mostly devoid of grandparents too, as people over 60 make up only 9.8 percent of the city’s population, compared to the surrounding suburbs where more than 17 percent of the population is between the ages of 60 and 84.
Sociologists have said they feel the city is now also attracting more young women who would not have children until their early 30s and would have otherwise raised their children outside the city. Some sociologists have noted that inner-city Sydney is not a very child-friendly area because there really isn’t much housing for children there. The census data revealed that only 24 percent of Sydney’s city dwellers are currently married compared to the Sydney suburbs and the rest of the nation where the rate of married couples is closer to 5- percent.
As a result of these census findings, Australians are beginning to think of Sydney’s inner-city area as a “young person’s area” where builders and property developers are designing new, smaller apartments specifically for singles and women without children as over 50 percent of the buyers in the market are currently single women under the age of 30.
