AUSTRALIA’s newborn babies are being more expensive than ever.
The new statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show that the average cost of a newborn baby has more than doubled in just 10 years, from $1,200 in 2009 to $2,350 in 2017.
The average price of a baby born in Australia in 2017 is now $1.7 million, while the average price for a new birth in Australia was $1 million in 2017, a $600,000 increase.
The increase in prices is not just because of higher costs for health care.
Newborns are also more likely to be placed in intensive care units due to complications.
But while the costs of childbirth have gone up, hospital beds have remained relatively constant.
The cost of caring for a newborn has also increased.
The latest figures show that a newborn in Australia is now spending an average of $11,000 on hospital costs and $5,500 on emergency services, compared to a year ago.
But the ABS says that this is down from $19,000 in 2009 and $25,000 a year earlier.
The ABS has published its own modelling that shows that the cost of care for newborns is still higher than the average for adults, meaning that while people are getting less expensive care, the cost for their children is going up.
Newborn babies will be more expensive to care for than adults, due to the increased cost of medical care.
But the rise in costs is not the only factor pushing up the cost.
New birth mothers have a higher risk of complications and death than other Australians, according to the ABS.
In a recent report, the ABC reported that newborns and their mothers were more likely than other babies to experience respiratory problems, brain injuries and heart defects.
The ABS says these complications include infection, infections of the blood vessels in the baby’s lungs, brain damage, bleeding, pneumonia, and blood clots.
The National Health and Medical Research Council also reports that babies with birth defects, as well as infants with brain injuries, were more at risk of developing brain tumours and other brain damage.
In 2018, newborns who had birth defects and had been in hospital for at least three months had a 20 per cent higher risk than newborns without birth defects.