Australia faces demographic turning point as deaths to outnumber births by 2060s

Every generation eventually confronts the arithmetic of its own aging, and Australia is now reading those numbers clearly: within four decades, deaths will outpace births, joining a quiet procession of wealthy nations already living on the other side of that threshold. The government's 2026 intergenerational report, released in September, frames this not as a crisis but as a convergence — of demographic gravity, slowing growth, and the unproven promise of artificial intelligence — that will define what kind of society Australia can afford to be. At its core, the report is a meditation on wheth