Pondering the Birthrate Decline...

[Upsideyourhead]

Was just reading an article about this and wanted to get other people's views. The birthrate in the UK is at a record low, 1.44:

https://post.parliament.uk/research-briefings/post-pn-0745/

The Adam Smith Institute thinks the triple lock on pensions will be unsustainable by 2036, due to too few working people.

I haven't really seen this spoken about on here, in fact, it's normally the opposite: save the planet, have fewer kids, etc. Just wondering what people think about this and what they think the solution is. I'm pretty optimistic, so I'm focusing on the fact there might be more housing available for the kids we do have...

I feel like one of these three things has to happen, but can't work out which would be most popular:

1. Retired people from 2036 will have a raw deal when it comes to their pensions - they'll get far less than expected. There may be fewer workers to do, or willing to do, care work, so OAPs might physically suffer that way also. But that's the way it is, until the working age population can balance again, in a few generations time (assuming it doesn't decrease even more).
2. We will need to encourage and incentivise even more immigration, to get in workers to care for our old people (through tax and providing services)
3. Encourage more people to have children (e.g. South Korea offers cheaper mortgage rates to parents), although few countries have done this successfully.

As someone who will be retired in 25 years, I'm leaning towards 2 or 3. But perhaps the result will be a mixture of all three.

I don't think any governments are facing up to this. When they do its always to berate women for being too picky or leaving it too late to have children because they love those careers and cats more ( never men though funnily enough). It doesn't work and if it did would cause another ' boomer ' problem down the line. We need to invest in managing the current generation of elderly ( even if it means getting them to pay more for their care) and then manage the economy for sustainability rather than endless profit and growth at the cost of everything else. AI may mean we need a Universal Basic Income and that can't work with 71 million people.

In Japan it’s virtually impossible for women to keep working after they have children. This puts more pressure on men to provide, working insanely long hours. Lots of them are deciding to remain single.

I had this conversation the other day with a friend. There seems to be far fewer teenagers who want to work a 9-5pm in an office environment. Getting rid of older people to make room for younger blood might be foolish as there aren't as many kids these days who want to work corporate jobs. Its all about being famous and an influencer now. I wonder if that will continue to be the case in say, 10yrs time.

Edited to say - I'm 51 now and I didn't have children because I simply couldn't afford them.

Lots of Japanese women are deciding to keep their independence and careers and stay single too. Give women a choice between purely childbearing and rearing or an education and career most will choose education and career.

I don’t understand the immigration argument. I can’t get my head around importing people on low wages to care for old people. Given the huge rise in people with disabilities we now have a situation where our welfare bill will soon be 25% if spending (including pensions which is a contributory benefit). We keep people alive and import people to look after them. How about we start expecting people to take more responsibility for themselves like it used to be. We’re fed the line about immigration, why not tell people that this is it, we won’t be importing people who are often doing low paid jobs, receiving benefits and need housing but we will now be promoting self responsibility. We roll back in what I see as the unaffordable and frankly mad obsession with everything being individualised for everyone - the government (and therefore taxpayer) meeting and paying for individualised wants and needs. I think it is big business that wants this - where is the huge amount paid to all these social care homes going?

We seem to be hurtling towards a situation where a smaller and smaller group of taxpayers pay for everything. This includes those people paying more for items paid for privately. There is a limit to what people will accept and people will leave. The very people we need.

A decline in population can be managed although a decline in birth rate and an increase in those needing life long support is tricky. I wonder if those countries with high birth rates have the same numbers of children born with disabilities? Will we just be importing a never ending increase in needs. We are also fed the line about migrants being net contributors however as with everything these days the data is provided to fit the narrative. Low skilled migrants are almost certainly net takers, high skilled are contributors.

Yes agree on pyramid scheme and much of the rest of your post.

It's the original ponzi scheme and has no consideration for the quality of life of the minions at the bottom. Don't have babies just to feed the machine, just let it die.

There needs to be shame for not looking after your elderly relatives like there was back in the day

There's no point trying to increase the birth rate amongst the existing population or importing people if there aren't enough jobs providing a decent, or indeed any, income.

Let's take Italy - 1.2 births per woman (2023) / 6.3 births per 1,000 people (2024). So that's bad, right?

Around 9% of the population foreign born. So that's good, yes, to make up for the low birth rate?

Youth unemployment - consistently around 20%, though sometimes much higher, e.g. almost 30% in 2021. Ah, now, here we have a problem.

Really?
Because every carer I've met (and they are predominantly female) ends up with worse mental health, no financial prospects and a reduced pension provision from years of no payment. We can't rely on unpaid labour and guilt to paper over the care cracks. On top of everything else, family carers are rarely equipped to care for complex needs (for example dementia or parkinsons) and its cruel to expect one or two people to put their life on hold to care around the clock for an elderly person.

Have a look at the cockroach cafe threads before spouting that sort of bollocks again. Casually taking for granted women's unpaid labour is why we are in this mess in the first place.

I’d agree with this. Reality is with AI coming there will be even less jobs to go around. A smaller population would be more sustainable, food production, housing.

Its quite easy to be pragmatic in the abstract though much harder when it’s real people. I just don’t think any government has the wherewithal to bring it in.

It is bonkers (to me) that some people with very poor quality of life are kept alive for many years at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds to the taxpayer whereas lots of people are suffering and can’t even get a GP appointment.

Except back in the day disease took you before dementia set it.
It's keeping the physical body functioning whilst the brain starts to fail.

Also back in the day households could live with one income, so financially and socially there were many more (largely female) hands on deck to help with older relatives. Part of the reason, I would guess, women don't want to be entwined with the in-law family set up, because they are aware they would be expected to make the career and financial sacrifices to look after elders who now live beyond their healthy brain's capacity. Probably part of the reason more care is needed because the sons are not willing to take on that role, wonder why?

Back in the day is not coming back.

I know several working families who would’ve had more if it wasn’t for the 2 child limit on what used to be child tax credit and now the child element on universal credit top up. Also, In the fight for equality, motherhood has been devalued… it wasn’t that long ago a mother didn’t have to work until their child was 12 - so certainly out of primary. Now it’s 3. Of course mothers should be allowed to work, but also staying with their young children should also be an option. It’s stressful and puts people off having more, or any. I know this is the case with my sister. She knows mothers from work with a child or two in primary, says it looks stressful and she just can’t do it, she knows she’d need the UC top up as husband works full time min wage, then they’d be forcing her into work… she’d have loved kids but at almost 30 feels it’d be better to just work, if she has kids she’d want to stay home for at least most of primary which isn’t an option… so opted to carry on working full time and be child free.

Though childcare and rising costs always seems to be citied as main reasons, it’s never mentioned when it’s come up in the admittedly occasional discussions I’ve had in real life. I think if 2 child limit was scrapped, and low income mothers werent forced to work before their youngest is 12, many would have more.

Even if your elderly relatives have dementia and need professional 24 hour care?

Take a more pragmatic approach to death and dying, which will involve a massive cultural shift in the UK and also bring in a comprehensive voluntary euthanasia programme (that includes access to those with dementia). 80% of healthcare budget goes on people in the last 12 months if life, and likewise with the social care budget. Quality of life over quantity

Good points. We have reached the stage where a 90+ year lifespan is seen as the norm, almost a right. Some of the things people were saying in the pandemic regarding this were very noticeable. I remember a poster being horrified - actually more than horrified, it was like she was outraged - by the notion that her father, already in his 70s and suffering from dementia, might die if he caught Covid, when otherwise she'd have a good 20 more years with him. She was one of the enormous chorus of people calling for stricter restrictions. While I've got no wish to enter a lockdown debate, it was that impression she had that if it wasn't for Covid he'd likely live into his nineties that struck me. This was a man who already had dementia so I guess she just didn't realise yet what that condition can do to a person's body (my own father died from dementia aged 74, five years after diagnosis)

Back when women didn't need to have full time jobs to keep things going you mean? I'm not going to feel shame when I don't look after my mother when she gets infirm. For one thing she's been paying into a very expensive insurance policy for years to cover this eventuality.

I'm sorry but I don't see why middle and higher earners should be paying women to stay at home until their child is 12?! when they themselves can't afford to have more than 2 children and can't afford to stay at home. Why can't your sister have children and go to work? It makes no sense to have no children rather than 2 and go to work with generous childcare benefits from the age of 3. The money doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from working people, including women.

We will have moved to universal income by then anyway. Scrap all benefits and pensions. Universal income and a high flat tax on earnings.

Make all unpaid caring responsibilities within a family unit equal between the males and females and you might, might start getting a more balanced, understanding and respectful society. From babies to infirm.

Women have stepped up in the working and earning roles time for the men to catch up with the caring roles.

It's a huge issue - because we like to keep our elderly population alive.
There are some serious demographic changes that are really changing the UK.

Commentators have suggested that immigration can lower the “old-age dependency ratio”, as migrants are often of working age, and tend to have more children than UK nationals.s,46 ONS data shows that in 2023, 31.8% of all live births were to non-UKborn mothers (187,975 births were to mothers were born outside the UK, out of a total of 591,072 births in total) in England and Wales (an increase from 30.3% in 2022).47 However, in 2001 and 2014 some academics suggested immigration may be an unsustainable solution to population decline and ageing in the long term, as immigrants begin to have fewer children and age themselves.48,49,t, u

I've seen many many threads on here bemoaning the falling birthrate. It's a good thing, good for the planet.

1. For a couple of generations there will be an imbalance and there won't be enough people working to pay pensions but that will even itself out within 50 or 60 years.
2. Immigration is not the answer. Immigrants also age.
3. Research shows it's not really simply a financial thing. It's more a lifestyle choice. The birthrate is declining not because people are choosing to have less children but because more people are choosing not to have children at all.

We now measure poverty in a way that actually ties people into dependency rather than structurally encouraging their ability to earn their keep.
Idleness is a bad thing.

Officially titled Social Insurance and Allied Services, it was written by Sir William Beveridge, a social economist. The report proposed a comprehensive system of social welfare to tackle five major societal problems — famously called the “Five Giants”:

• Want (poverty)
• Disease
• Ignorance
• Squalor
• Idleness

Good, we need less people on this planet.I think we've done enough damage already.

1. With a birth rate below 2.1, the imbalance will never even out. Each generation is smaller than the previous one, unless we can get the birth rate up to 2.1 again. This has never been achieved in any country. It’s going to take radical action to achieve.
2. Correct. And they also match the host nation’s birth rate in the next generation.
3. kind of - it’s true more people are having zero rather than families having fewer children. The research actually shows that people still WANT and INTEND to have enough children to fix the decline, but for whatever reason (lack of partner etc) they don’t achieve the children they wanted.

This thread is about population decline. 😀