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?

It only affects pensions and services. Once the earth runs out of people, it'll be fine.

What birthdate are you advocating for?

I can’t tell if this post applies to a high population and low resources or demographic shift

Wow. That’s a negative take on familial relationships.

Not one I recognise with my teenagers, thankfully.

I thought this picture was an interesting one. You need to click on it to see the total figures;

That’s a great graphic

There is also a lack of good quality men. Women are a lot more reluctant to settle for less than ideal partners these days and so many decide it's just not worth the risk of being left with all the work and responsibility.

There’s definitely truth in this- it’s part of the reason Israel has politically shifted as it has. A declining BR is problematic at societal level. The problem is, how to solve it. You can’t make individuals want more children. I have kids but am massively against anything that is effectively punitive taxation on the child free and wary of financial incentives as I don’t believe it would work- even if the government paid in full the costs of me bringing up a third child I still wouldn’t have had one because it’s time and emotional bandwidth not money that’s the barrier.

This came up on my social media in January and then I heard it on the radio.

Because you are older you don't realise that 20 years go was at the turn of the 21st century, 30 years ago was in the 1990s, etc.

You just get trapped thinking what 20 years ago etc was when you were in your teens/20s.

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.

We can’t hit income much more.

I also find the anti family rhetoric depressing.

Having children is hard and not for everyone. But for most people creating and being part of a family and those relationships are the most meaningful thing in life.
80% of childless woman it was not by choice. People still want children. It's a deep human need for most people.

I think the mental health crisis will deepen as people feel life feels empty and without purpose without family.
Families are are foundational to our need to belong, to be loved and to have responsibility to others.

Yes your 14 year old might be annoying at times and you'll feel like throttling them but that doesn't mean you wouldn't also go to the ends of the earth and back for them if they needed you to.
The parent child bond is so deep and incomparable that it can't be replaced by money or better soil.

The headline is pretty meaningless without the detail. Only with this will we see the true extent of the problem, if it is a problem.

For example it's important to know if it's the As and Bs who are not having children and the Ds and Es having more children. Is there a difference in the birth rate within different ethnic groups etc. Only then will we know the extent of the problem.

@lemmefinish They actually do have immigration but mainly from other places in Asia.

They also have a problem that Japanese women mainly, but also Japanese men don't want to have children with one another due to the stifling traditional expectations placed on them by their families.

Yes exactly

The cost of housing is a real problem

housing or rather making housing the economy has really fucked things up.

@MalagaNights if you look at research immigrants who come to the UK and have lots of children, find their own children tend to have the same amount as the peers they are brought up with.

If the population decreases house prices will go down
We should find an equilibrium

If the population decreases house prices will go down

Theres a school of thought that when the boomers all die off there will be a glut of family homes on the market which will depress prices but i’m not sure. The government probably needs to keep high prices up to access that money towards care.

https://sites.psu.edu/aspsy/2015/09/17/how-much-more-space-is-there/

Typically an animal population is not static and naturally fluctuates above and below carrying capacity. This phenomenon is an interesting aspect to life on earth and I would argue that the human race has yet to reach or define a carrying capacity. Perhaps, we are quickly reaching this juncture and a cataclysmic decline in human population will occur, forcing humans to reach equilibrium.

Right but even so you don’t need 5 kids to have that bond- you still get it with 1 or 2 kids and the strain on you is less as a result. There’s no evidence that more kids or more siblings makes people happier. There will always also be those who can’t have or don’t want kids so if people who do want kids have fewer, we’ll just end up below 2 and that’s just how it is. I’m not sure where your 80% comes from as Yougov did a survey in 2020 and 37% of childless British adults said they don’t want kids.

Having kids is expensive. We're a, largely, better educated society who have more choices. I would say about half of my uni friends remain child free in our 40s. A third of my school friends. I had 2 kids, because I'm one of 2, so it made sense.

Lots of kids tends to, but not always, be linked with more chaotic lives. One woman I was in school with has 8 kids. She started when we were 16. She never had any money (according to fb) and is in an on/off relationship with the dad.

I do worry that we're the wrong way round now- more old people than young. Those of us in our 40s area already paying the price. How bad will it be for our kids? Come to think of it, how bad will it be for us if we're propping up generations above and more being propped up underneath?

Maybe it depends on how religious they are? It also depends on how economically successful they are.
The more successful the fewer children.

Wealthier people have fewer children even though expense is often given as a reason for the falling birth rate.

It is still conservative religious communities who remain the only groups in the west maintaining birth rate. It's true of conservative religious Muslim, Jewish, and Christians such as Mormon and traditional Catholics in the USA. We don't have much of a conservative Christian community in the UK.

Maybe the solution is we'll all just end up Amish?
Because they keep having kids and know how to use a plough? 😁

Population collapse here we come.

It never does though with constant immigration and housing being bought as investment by non domiciles

I remember the 1980s.

I remember news reports and articles about how population growth was dooming the world, and that everyone was going to starve to death because there would be too many people.

I remember charities appealing for money to open contraception/birth control clinics in Africa so that women had the choice.

I remember debates about whether China's one child policy should be introduced in other countries as well - it was considered a really good thing.

The mood music has really changed!

I think that these policies and movements largely worked, and that people responded by having fewer children.

In addition, I remember studying something called the population transition at uni. This is basically the point at which additional children become a burden not an asset.

So in Niger, and in Britain in the past, children worked in the fields or in the family business from a young age. They were productive. They were also your old age pension in a society that had no state support. They supported you when you were old and couldn't work.

But in Britain, as children slowly were not allowed to work, and began to go to school, and first the friendly societies and then the old age pension happened, children cost more and weren't the only form of pension.

So people had fewer.

Now children are incredibly expensive, both in terms of money and in terms of time. You need a big house if you want lots of children. You need a big car. And as a parent there is absolutely zero return on that investment.

I reckon it'll polarise - if you are a sahm an extra child is not that expensive. You are already out of work and that is the main cost. So people will either have one or two kids or lots and lots.

Or trying to kid themselves that they are, or just not thinking it through at all 🤷🏼‍♀️
To be fair we have up until now focused only on the consequences of too many new humans, I think few people anticipated a situation where the opposite would occur, let alone be a problem.