Birth rate hits record low - 1.49 children per woman

[MidnightPatrol]

The ONS has released its latest data on the UK birthrate.

The number of children per women has dropped from 1.55 in 2022 to 1.49 in 2022 - the lowest on record.

This is the lowest number of births in the UK since 2002 - when the population was 10 million people smaller.

Do we think this problem will inevitably worsen? Are there particular reasons people are having less children (unique to the UK vs the rest of the world?).

Should we be taking steps to increase it / stop it reducing further?

To use a corny phrase, it is a ticking time bomb for the economy, as older generations live far longer.

What can be done to alleviate it? Rejoin the EU and allow much more immigration of young people who want to work and raise families.

On tech we’re not going to be able to stop advancement

The best we can do is make sure we’re not overly flooded with unemployed young people and work out how to get enough tax from it

What do you envision for the future pensioners in the UK though? Will ‘the world as a whole’ step in and look after them when they need care?

I don't disagree that more immigration of young people who want to work and raise families would help us in the UK!
However surely all countries are experiencing the same process which will mean there aren't enough young people who want to work and raise families to go around?

Furthermore once people become settled they tend to adopt the norms of the country in which they settle, such as women choosing to remain childless so they can invest in themselves and their earning potential (just like men always have)

Yes, strange that. Seriously though, my MIL is in her late seventies and not very mobile, but generally a lovely person to be around and she’s definitely enjoying life.

At least two in South London alone announced last year. One of which has been going since 1699 but the numbers just aren't there in their area.

Very good point. Nothing needs to exist if we’re going to get really philosophical, including the planet.

I thought my dad was a "you'll have to prise the steering wheel out of my cold dead hands" kind of man.
I thought driving was be central to his identity, however he appears to be quite happy to accept that he may need a mobility scooter as he gets older.
When you are young the thought of being elderly may seem terrible, but when you get there you've had a long time to adjust and you may just want to enjoy your life for as long as you can 🤷🏼‍♀️

I wouldn't say that DGM 'enjoyed' life, being, it seems temperamentally incapable of enjoyment unless she was being horrible to someone, but she emigrated to Australia aged 82 and lived for another 10 years. So by no means ready to shuffle off at 70.

Quite enjoyed the essay, you’re making some very good points 🙂

Sounds lovely 😊

I agree.
I also find it somewhat depressing how PP mentions relatives (including her dad) who according to her occupy houses too big for them, only to talk about legalising euthanasia in her next sentence.
So those people still seem fit enough to live by themselves, but since they’re old (75+, shock horror!) they should just clear off and make room for others?

I’m 45 and I would be devastated if my mum decided to go.

I'm 55, and I hope my mum is still around for as long as possible. I don't need her to be, but I do want it!

Not true. The ONS report on the 2022 census states the following:

• Life expectancy at birth in the UK in 2020 to 2022 was 78.6 years for males and 82.6 years for females; compared with 2017 to 2019, life expectancy has fallen by 38 weeks from 79.3 years for males and by 23 weeks from 83.0 years for females.
• Life expectancy improvements have been slow for the last decade, and the latest estimates of life expectancy at birth are back to the same level as 2010 to 2012 for females and slightly below the 2010 to 2012 level for males.

Foolish to say that people will just go on living longer and longer. The wealthy may live longer but men in Glasgow, for example, are lucky to make it to retirement age. Pollution, the effect of ingesting plastics through our food and water, the appearance of new and deadlier versions of viruses, the loss of efficacy of antibiotics — all sorts of reasons why life expectancy can't be guaranteed to keep going up.

I'm 30 and pregnant with my first baby. I don't know if I will have anymore.

A lot of the women I went to university with do not want children. Mostly due to cost, they'd rather have a career, travel easily, etc, or simply because they don't like them and have no desire to be tied to the home raising a child. I said I didn't want children for years and years and the main reason was down to cost and because I, selfishly or not, wanted my life to be about me. I wanted to do what I want when I wanted. When you have a child a lot of your identity becomes tied up in motherhood- a lot of my friends say that, and it's not the life they want. Lot of people I know also can't stand the thought of having a baby with the way the world currently is. Life in the UK looks pretty bleak. My generation will probably work until we're like 80, global warming isn't going anywhere, the government grows more fascist all the time, we're living in a time of awful cost of living, it's difficult to get on the property ladder, mental health rates continue to climb, the NHS is failing, and so on. Lots of people just don't want to bring a child into that.

I think lots of women just want different things now. And I know you can technically have a career and raise a child, but it's damn hard given the cost of living. There are also factors such as being passed over for promotion due to the chance you may fall pregnant, time taken out of career progression if you do have a baby, and so on.

I'd do anything to stay home and not work for a few years and give my all to my baby, but I can't and will need to return to full time work. The days of one incoming being able to support a household are gone. Childcare fees are extortionate. I have a decent job as a band 6 nurse, and my partner works full time in a bar, and we will very much struggle with one child due to nursery fees. A second one is just financially unimaginable currently.

I genuinely don’t know how many jobs might be replaced by AI in 10, 15 or 20 years. What do you think?
Do you think all care/ service work will be done by robots? What impact will this have on people’s mental state?

Great post, @MorwennaBogtrotter

Interesting thought, @leonsilva . I’m an only and thinking about the other only children I know, most have had more than one child. I can think of one who has a single child through choice. Being an only child definitely has pros and cons.

Yes, @Abeona and tbh, do most people even want to live into their 90’s?

No, I don't think I would want to live past my mid-80s judging from family and friends' experiences. Some people age far better than others but I do hope that if I reach that time of life it will be possible to arrange a quick, painless and dignified death to suit me. I used to visit an aunt who died at the age of 95 in 2019. She was cognitively unimpaired — still sharp and reading voraciously in the run-up to her death — but had terrible arthritis and had been unable to walk more than a few steps for years. For the last decade of her life she talked often about wanting to die. The carers did what they could in their snatched visits but she was lonely and in pain.

She eventually died after falling badly. She had a week in hospital in a noisy, chaotic ward where she got very little care. I saw her two days before she died. She'd refused to eat or drink and was really distressed by the loss of dignity. Her last words to me were 'Don't get old.' Perhaps you have to have been through something like this to realise that there are worse things in life than death.

I mean, what political party is willing to build a plan to transition to a smaller social model, supporting employment and education transition, redesigning supply chains etc - and then be mad enough to try and get the public to VOTE for it!?

This stood out for me. Our politicians love to dodge the difficult issues - better to do a bit of rabble-rousing about small boats, instead of fixing the larger issues at the Home Office. I can't see anyone planning a transition until it's forced on us and even then, it will be piecemeal.

I'm going to be a broken record on this. Growing old is inevitable. But it does not need to happen in poverty, loneliness and pain. We can and should do a lot more, from more options for shared living to better care arrangements. We also need to incentivise people to look after their health.

At the end of the day, we cannot force the population to have babies and at this stage, even with immigration, we are looking at a top-heavy population pyramid. It would almost certainly be worse without our current migrants. Perhaps we should be sending bouquets to the India, Nigerian and Chinese governments for making our country more appealing than theirs (2023 top migration nationalities, ONS stats).

Women want careers now, don’t want to stay at home and raise children or have to take time out of their career. Not to mention childcare costs, and managing childcare during school holidays as children get older. And days off for inset days/sickness… it’s a nightmare for mothers and pretty much all my friends have had to take a career break or take a lower grade due to going part time!…
Not many fathers step up… some do, but majority still see their jobs as more important (in my experience anyway!)

And from an environmental point of view it would be good if couples across the world only had one child…. Cutting the population in half with each generation wouldn’t be a bad thing for our planet!

As more and more women have entered the workplace, businesses have used this to their advantage to not increase wages as much as inflation/housing costs.

30+ years ago, families could easily live on one parents wages, now that more families are two income households, companies are effectively splitting the wage in half so we are no better off today with two people working than our parents were with one.. and in many instances, worse off as house prices are so much higher than incomes so a lot of people (myself included) are buying houses later, meaning leaving having children until later due to stability (owning home), childcare costs and maternity leave etc.