Women in Alberta waiting longer to have kids: study

If you’re a young woman planning on holding off a few more years before having children, you’re not alone — new data from the University of Calgary is showing an interesting trend in the average age of first time mothers in Canada.

In 1965, the average Canadian woman had her first baby at the age of 23.5. In 2019, the age rose to 29.4.

Ron Kneebone, a professor at the UCalgary School of Public Policy says out of all Canadian provinces, Alberta has seen the biggest increase in age over the last 15 years.

Data suggests these trends have more to do with changing societal norms than the rising cost of living and childcare.

“This trend has been going on through booms and busts, periods of high cost of living, through periods low cost of living — nothing seems to shake that trend, it just continues to go up,” he explained.

The new report also finds first-time mothers are usually oldest in B.C. and youngest in Saskatchewan.

“Those provincial differences are interesting because that’s where differences in cost of living might play a role. So, in B.C. women delay having their first child longer than elsewhere possibly because the cost of living is so high in B.C.,” he explained.

He says waiting later to start a family means smaller families, and that could impact all sorts of policy decisions from school builds to pensions.

“We need to think about what this means for the financing of pensions because, again, there’s going to be fewer people following up behind us old folks to pay for our pensions,” Kneebone explained. “Finally, it has really important implications for how we set immigration targets, something that’s been in the news lately. If we don’t have immigrants, then we’re going to have a shrinking population.”