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?

I agree overall it is a good thing.
there will be an inevitable negative impact, probably on our generation, but I think we need to take one for the team.
possibly medical approaches will adapt too. So much money is spent on operations and interventions for the very elderly, and we may need to revisit how we manage old age and our attitudes to dying.

100 years ago we needed people to work the land

Do you think we don't know? Agriculture is no longer needed or do you think it's fully automatised? A lot of food is now imported, and the UK is in a poor position in terms of its own national food security, but the work is still done. Even in the UK farmers still exist.

@TheABC Yes the problem is how we have done nothing to plan for it although I think the gov get away with it because the public seem to think people are still popping out 5 dc for a council house. As you say the economy needs a major shift. Japan has planned for decades & are still finding it a big problem. We’ve not done a thing.

I’m not seeing a great appetite for population growth in the U.K.

but this is going to be like watching a slow motion car crash and when other people are just like ‘oh yes less people, how fantastic for the planet, this will be good’ just makes me eye roll HARD!

Agree

Nothing needs to be. But I love my family and hope for the best

Japan isn't as immigrant friendly as the UK is. It also helps that English is more widely spoken around the world than Japanese.

I’m not seeing a great appetite for population growth in the U.K.

@EasternStandard What do you mean? The population is growing…

but this is going to be like watching a slow motion car crash and when other people are just like ‘oh yes less people, how fantastic for the planet, this will be good’ just makes me eye roll HARD!

Can you say what the workforce will be like when dc born now finish education?

Why should women have more children?

We have to work f/t to pay our mortgage and bills. We get very little help with childcare, our parents are working till they are nearly 70 so can’t help. It’s too stressful to have more than 1.

The govt. only have themselves to blame.

Why do we need a 70 million population. Other countries have much less, and do very well as a result of having less people.

@Reugny Japan decided they didn’t want immigration but did put a lot of policies in place in terms of making work, the environment accessible to older people. Huge culture of looking after one’s health etc. We don’t have that

Maybe in the UK but certainly not in many other countries.

It won't stay upside down for long. Some of this is the boomers working their way to the top of the pyramid.

.

There's no stigma in being childfree

🤣🤣🤣🤣

I’m very confident that you have children.

I'm in the Kathy Burke school of thinking.

'40 years ago was the 80's'

I have rewrote this comment over and over because this has made me very upset 😂😭

I'm mid 30s with two kids. At the school gates, the norm is 1-3 kids, with a definite trend towards the wealthier families having 3. The thing that surprises me is how many people I know that are begining to look like they won't have children: my mum has a close group of five friends but only two are grandmothers, I know a fair chunk of women who just didn't 'settle down'.

I also think there's a big difference when I look at my mum's experience of raising kids: she stayed home, lived in a village, mum round the corner, etc. It feels like we are also learning that we can't 'have it all ', which was the narrative of our teens.

There is also the issue of women working but still doing everything for the house, admin, mental load and childcare. Why would they add to that already formidable burden.

The thing is, it’s not primarily financial. Otherwise countries like Sweden where childcare is basically free and policies support women working would have higher birth rates. In fact sweden’s birth rate is only marginally higher than the uk’s. The fact is that most women who have children don’t want more than two and it’s hard to come up with any arguments why having three children adds to your QOL- ie women are making a rational choice for themselves given how expectations around intensity of parenting have developed over the last 20 years or so. At the same time, more women are choosing not to have any children, probably for the same reasons. Result- average will be less than 2. It’s hard to argue it’s a bad thing when it’s a good thing for the women concerned.

Mum liked having babies, not so interested in once we were a bit older and out of the cute stage though.

5th one was a suprise, and she had to have an even number so they had number 6 and also they wanted a boy, which thank god the youngest is or i dread to think when they would of stopped!

It does seem inevitable that if you give women rights and the ability to earn their own living, they will choose to have very few children, including in countries a lot less well off than the U.K.. Government policies to encourage women to have more children don't seem to be very effective.

I see it as a very good thing for the planet, although I do think it is sad when women end up childless despite wanting children. We now live in a society which seems to frown on women having babies at a young age. If the norm is now to start your family in your late twenties or thirties, it leaves a very short window for women. I didn't have my first until my late thirties, so I could have easily missed the boat.

I also think people want to give their kids a certain lifestyle these days, which obviously limits the number of children you feel you can afford.

At some point we are going to have to tackle the demographic shift. We can't keep kicking it down the road with immigration. People seem to forget immigrants also get old, and long term, it will just make the problem worse.

I think there would be so many benefits to the U.K. if we would just embrace a gently declining population. A lot of the financial pressure on families comes from having to have 2 incomes just to afford accommodation. If housing prices were stagnant or declining, we wouldn't have to work so hard just to put a roof over our heads.

Maybe people would be inclined to have more babies if they could buy a family home on one average income, as was certainly possible for my parents in their early twenties.

I wish we would look at quality of life rather than how 'rich' the country is.

As to how we pay for an older population, I would suggest focusing tax increases on wealth, starting by taxing all inheritances as income. Nobody deserves to inherit over a million pounds tax free.

Also I think doctors need to have more honest conversations with very elderly people about treatment. Quality of life is important.

Ultimately I hope we can create a society where women can have the number of children they want. It's not for everyone, but my children have been nothing but a joy to me, even now they are teenagers!

The ideal birth rate remains a mystery to me. The balance of the strain on the planet overall vs the actual age distribution of the population needs to be considered.

the current rate reflects rational decision making. Parents can concentrate resources on a small number of children. If the rate is indeed too low, shaming parents for wanting a high quality of life will do nothing. People need to have an incentive to raise children. They need high quality childcare, good schools, sufficient housing, and the knowledge that there is an affordable pathway to those things for the offspring they create. Programs targeting the birth rate need to extend to all economic groups because they all feel the strain in their own way.

It's mostly a global phenomenon apart from across the Middle East and Africa where religion seems to play a role.

The people continuing to have larger families are religious and conservative communities.
So culture and politics are likely to shift with this.
So you may think that's a bad thing?

Who is going to save the planet if all the eco warriors don't have kids??

I find this blase 'we'll take one for the team' it'll be great for future generations both depressing and hilarious.

Depressing because I don't think people have really thought through the potential scale of human misery you are just easily dismissing.
The loneliness, the poverty, the lack of functioning community, the failure of the health and education system.
Probably propped/ patched up by (religious) immigrants.
So sod their economies? They sacrifice to try to keep ours limping along for as long as possible?
Doesn't seem a very moral plan.

And hilarious because of the god almighty wailing when energy prices rose and we realised we were going to be colder and poorer.
The idea everyone will understand and accept when their quality of life falls off a cliff is laughable. There's going to be anger and blame which could turn nasty.