UK fertility rate drops by 18.8% in 12 years

Yep. And I think it’s a good thing.

Yes I think so my friends that rent are forever having to move because the landlord is selling, or putting rent up, or wants to move back in. It's very hard to plan school, childcare etc if you keep moving. Wheras the social housing of old was a secure tenancy. And rents were vaguely sensible.

My adult children, in their 30's, just don't want any, and are happy without being tied down. I think a lot of young people are making this choice, they have more options open to them these days, which is a good thing.

For me it was the fact my other half didn't want to get married and have kids until I was 30. Then time was limited. I had two and the last pregnancy in my mid 30's was so exhausting. I don't know how women do it in their 40's. I really wanted to start a family from my mid 20's. Had I started earlier I would have had another. This was in the days when you could get a mortgage with your first job and no deposit though. I suspect these days in addition to the problem of men wanting to wait couples will also have to choose between renting and starting a family earlier or waiting until they can get on the housing ladder and that won't be possible for everyone.

@rainfallpurevividcat

I would challenge some of your points:

• Capitalism requires constant economic growth.
Not necessarily- if you have a constant level of GDP value and a declining population then the GDP per head goes up (assuming zero inflation).

• Economic growth requires the right kind of skills and labour.
True but this is a function of education, training and salaries. If bricklayers became in greater short supply and let's say the average salary rose to £100k then an awful lot of people would seek to retrain and move jobs to become bricklayers.

• We don't have enough people to carry out the labour required for growth.
22% of the workforce are economically inactive (including 4% unemployed). Either education/ training/ salaries or a reduction in benefits would encourage more back into the workplace.

• More people means more homes and services need to be built, whether it's from immigration or babies being born.
True which has both an economic and environmental impact.

• More homes and infrastructure means more carbon use and severe impact on the environment and climate.
Definitely true.

Last time I looked at ONS figures - was a while ago - there was a very small % increased in number of women not having any children and a much bigger decrease in family size - though 2 kids was still most common.

Most of the commentary on this big UK drop point out nearly all the world bar sub-Saharan Africa is having lowering of fertility - but we seem to have gone faster than other G7 countries and they are blaming austerity - and note it's happening fastest in poorer areas of UK.

So I suspect the extra decline in the UK it's people who want kids but stopping due to financial constraints.

If I was starting now we wouldn't have had as many as it was hard enough when they were young and it's just got worse with cost of living going up not to mention declines in maternity services - we'd have maybe had another but our experience with last one and maternity services was just horrific and by time we move we felt too old.

This is all on top of the large background decline happening everywhere for many reasons - longer education for women and men rising housing cost as we urbanize even more etc.

Cost of living, both parents having to work (vast majority anyway) etc.

The most effective means of population control is female education.

You can see the trend in countries that historically had low female education and low female education which now have higher female education and higher female employment that have then seen their birth rates fall. South Korea being a strong example.

Yes we can’t infinitely increase the population without life expectancy reducing. Does anyone want to live in a world where people are expected to voluntarily end their lives when they reach a certain age, regardless of their health etc? Soylent Green/ Logan’s Run scenario?

I think the instability of the rental market plays a huge part. Renting social housing is very different to being dependent on a private landlord who can kick you out with very little notice.

It’s interesting to me how many people don’t want to have children unless they own a property.

Not saying that is right or wrong but wonder if this is class based. I was 18 before I lived in a non-rented property and growing up in my low socio-economic / underclass area having kids in rented property was the norm.

I think that's definitely part of it - they enjoy their careers and their independence and don't want to sacrifice it all for a baby, or pay a small fortune in childcare costs.

Even if both parents are fully onboard and contribute fairly, working full time while you raise a family is time consuming, stressful and expensive - lots of people don't want to spend a good 20 years of their life like that.

I think it’s quite simple. People are joining the workforce quite late. I did a UG and masters, I thought I was late to join workforce (25). The number of people who have to do phds or retrain to stand out is unreal.

Many if my friends only finished qualifying c. 27 some still going at early/ mid 30s.

I had mine right when my career was breaking through. I’m trying to have it all. It doesn’t real,y work. Everything just gets a bit shit.

Currently pregnant with my second/ last and thinking of going to top up train with a post grad on maternity.

Yes - it's only a few countries in the world now which are driving the high birth rates, as soon as they are able to have more equal opportunities and better education in those countries then the global population will start to decline.

We may still have a problem of an imbalance in young and old though. I don't know what the solution is.

I agree that it's financial.

I know a few couples who have waited until their mid 30's to start trying as they have spent their 20's and early 30's saving for a house deposit.

It's responsible to not bring a child into the World while you are struggling financially, I think.

Agree. We’re entering a phase of increased volatile over resources and always increasing is unsustainable

I’m ok with that plus by the time dc born today reach the workforce it’ll likely be a very different landscape

Maybe we won’t want the same number graduating to fewer jobs as tech ramps up

More women are getting educated and seeing that there is more to life than just being a mum.

The South Korean example is extreme but also an unavoidable consequence of their gender politics (and cost of living).

I just don’t see how the issue can be fixed. Birth rates always fall with greater female autonomy and education. Maybe it can be made easier for couples to afford the family size they want but that still needs money from…somewhere.

Ponzi scheme demographics are not a great idea for very obvious reasons. But the cliff edge situation in South Korea where you lose 80% of the population over two generations is also very problematic.

We should be able to cope with a gradual population decline, eg with a fertility rate of 1.8-2. But fertility rates below 1.5, let alone below 1, are stoking up serious problems for thirty or forty years time.

And despite what some people think, it's not a temporary problem that we'll have to live with for a bit before things "level out". If fertility rates continue below 1.5 then the same unbalanced inverted demographic pyramid continues indefinitely - it won't fix itself naturally unless people start to have more babies again. Release on housing pressures might motivate that to some extent but it's difficult to foresee - the delays inherent in the process mean that another two generations will have made their childbearing choices by the time that housing stock pressures are released. It'll all sort itself out in the long run maybe, just as European society did after the Black Death, but over a much longer timescale.

Maybe because rental prices are out of this fucking world? Where are people going to live? Salaries are also too low. Having children would be like willingly shooting yourself in the foot. And I say that as a parent of 2

We certainly have a problem.

• Capitalism requires constant economic growth.
• Economic growth requires the right kind of skills and labour.
• We don't have enough people to carry out the labour required for growth.
• More people means more homes and services need to be built, whether it's from immigration or babies being born.
• More homes and infrastructure means more carbon use and severe impact on the environment and climate.

But no-one is suggesting an alternative model, this is all we have to work with.

Feminism is about equitable treatment irrespective of sex.

It has nothing to do with creating dual income households.

The post I referred to was specific to pensions.

But what you describe just sounds like a ponzu scheme as the population will have to keep growing and growing in order to manage that.

We need to find new ways of funding as populations will continue to age and you cannot force people to have [more] children.

It's not just paying pensions, it's having enough working people to pay enough tax so we can have public services and a functioning society- health being one of them, well-used by pensioners.