Falling birth rate v immigration UK

[TripBalzac]

I’m missing something obvious, probably, but why isn’t immigration the solution to the falling birth rate?

Not if they all go on to also have 4 or 5 kids each. Also more likely to be given social housing because of family size.

Many migrant females don't work outside of home for cultural reasons. They are seen as homemakers. The DH works and then they get lots of benefits top ups

Authoritarian faiths - that’s it! The description I’ve been looking for!!

A non religious country has many incomers with A Fs naturally the culture will move from the old to the demands of the new.
Also where I live the foreign students are getting jobs in the U.K. after achieving their degrees which is good, right, but probably accepting lower salaries than U.K. born students - and immigration standing at 700,000 most of whom are students that must have effects on jobs and pay.

i think in the end the oldies will be forced to pay for their own care, which many do, and accept a reduction in pension.

But how do you know what the 'majority' are?
I'll look for the figures but actually the vast majority of migrants are educated.

Unlike postwar Britain where anybody from a commonwealth country could just show up and get the right to stay, it's very difficult to legally migrate to the UK in 2024. There's a stringent list of acceptable professions, required salary even spouse visa requires a high salary.

Refugees, boat people and illegal immigrants get a lot of press but they're not the majority by a long shot.

Immigration isn't the solution for falling birth rates, it is a cause of falling birth rates. Lots of middle- to lower-income couples put off having children because they can't afford a suitable home. Plenty can't even find a suitable home to rent, it's not just about buying.

Immigration is a cause of higher house prices and a cause of lower wages. Too many people chasing too few homes means prices rise. Importing cheap workers instead of attracting home-grown talent with higher wages keeps earnings down and also reduces the need to invest in and train native workers.

Immigration isn't the only cause of these things, but it is only a very short term solution which builds up problems for the future.

Britain is addicted to immigration - at least, British employers are. Getting a fix might help in the short term but long term the cure for addiction isn't to increase the sufferer's access to whatever they are addicted to. As a country we're like a heroin addict or long-term alcoholic. We need to be weaned off the substances we are addicted to.

People would have more children if wages were higher and housing was more secure. Mass immigration causes lower wages and less housing. I guess it’s swings and roundabouts.

As a PP said though, I don’t see why a falling birth rate is a bad thing. Our country, and indeed, our planet, cannot support more and more people every year.

This is the relevant @TripBalzac of a national identity, and its links to values.
People argue 'well Britain is a Christian country cos holidays' but that's where it stops.
We don't have blasphemy laws - as they contradict freedom of speech.
Separation of religion and state.
Protection against discrimination
Etc.

A lot of people are from countries where the culture is quite the opposite, and this in turn is reflected by law.

Above all else the secular laws and values of the national must come first. If people don't like it, the shouldn't move here and complain. Multiculturalism involves IMO keeping the aspect of your culture that don't clash . Not all of it.

We need more 20-30 year olds short term because of a huge elderly population. What we don't need is to have more 70-80 year olds still in 40 years time as then the problem just continues and resources are as stretched as ever. What we need is better management of elderly care.

Immigration isn't the solution for falling birth rates, it is a cause of falling birth rates. Lots of middle- to lower-income couples put off having children because they can't afford a suitable home. Plenty can't even find a suitable home to rent, it's not just about buying.

The birth rate has been falling for decades - it went below replacement level 2.1 in late 1970s in UK. It's usually attributed to women education employment and access to contraceptives

I'd agree the lack of affordable house low wages etc is delaying or denying parenthood further and it also from ONS figures suggests it's reducing number of children a woman has as well.

I think there could be more support for people wanting children to achieve them but countries that do put that support in only tend to get modest increases in fertility rates - which while helpful just means a slump not cliff in population decline and in mean time more dependents per tax payer this time young ones and 20 + years till get taxable workers.

The truth is, children take a lot of effort. And in bygone days nobody really thought about whether they wanted them. It was just as natural as growing up.
Now we have lots of choices, many who don't actively want them have decided to not have them at all!
While yes, many claim that they won't have them because costs/housing etc etc I think many just don't see the benefits.

I don't see this problem as an economic issue so much as a cultural issue. Most modern families raising children need both parents to work for financial reasons, meaning they need to outsource childcare and care for elderly family members. Family units are broken into smaller and smaller pieces.

Now, I am NOT suggesting women return to the burden of caring for others 24/7. However, the current family/community model isn't working, and we need to find a better one that does not involve sacrificing women. Movements are looking at reduced working hours (for the same pay rate), freeing people to spend more time with family, pursuing new skills and learning, and reducing stress and work overload. This must be explored thoroughly and not ignored or abandoned because somebody might profit a bit less.

We do not need a more significant population worldwide. It has been estimated that every human on earth could live in an advanced, functional society with less than half a million people worldwide. The argument that we have to have more children to care for the elderly is problematic because it then becomes cyclical. Who cares for those children when they are elderly? At what point do we accept that this is not a workable long-term solution? We need better ways to support our elderly population.

We must ensure that people do not succumb to aging as rapidly as they do now. This involves better preventative health care and pathways between work modes for those who have worked in physically intensive jobs when they were younger and into less intensive roles as they get older. If people's bodies are broken, they will not age well. But this also means educating people to self-manage their health and aging more effectively.

We should also value older community members and integrate them more effectively into our communities as they age. Give them relevant roles where they can utilise their lived experiences and acquired skills and understand they still have something valuable to share.

We need to scream blue murder over our education systems, which are not fit for purpose—unless the purpose is to produce drones. A genuinely productive society would make education freely available and capable of delivering people with 21st-century skills - for all people at all stages of life. As society advances in knowledge, we must ensure everyone advances with it. We already have the capabilities to ensure no one is left behind, from infancy onwards, but they are limited to a few (why do you think people want to send their children to private schools?)

Equity and equality worldwide would end the entire migration issue. People would not move to the UK (for example) to earn poor wages and endure poor working and living conditions if everyone worldwide had similar living standards, education, healthcare, wages, etc. People might then choose to move to the UK for a few years to develop more skills and knowledge in a specific area, enable their children to experience a different culture, or even for a change of climate (for example), but equally, British people might be moving to other people's countries to do the same.

While yes, many claim that they won't have them because costs/housing etc etc I think many just don't see the benefits.

I do think there a lot of that.

However when they ask existing parents many say they'd have more if they could but fiances stop them - and that never really gets addressed the focus tends to land childless women who may well have actively chosen that.

We need to scream blue murder over our education systems

I do think this - schools seem to be less and less the social mobility engine they once were in society. Also they put a huge burden on parents - so much busy work masquerading as home work to tick boxes - when our kids struggled they often didn't struggle enough for help at school so that put it on us - we did way more support work than our parents even thought of doing.

@caringcarer

They should have to work like everyone else does otherwise they are being a burden on the taxpayer so it defeats the purpose

Staying at home is a luxury

This is true. We need people here who are here to fill the gaps for legitimate hard to fill vacancies. We don’t need large families where only one adult is working and doing the minimum to claim top up benefits. We don’t need any more people to set up money laundering businesses or work on the black market economy. If I look at my social media feed I can see post after post of people looking for ‘cash in hand’ jobs.

We also need everyone to take responsibility to keep themselves as health as possible. My friends are all in their sixties and above now, and the alcohol, tobacco and diet is catching up with so many of us. We had it drummed into us during covid that she had to ‘protect the NHS’, and that message should be much wider. It’s time to look after ours selves.

immigration is sort of solution, for sure--that's the reason why japan is trying their best to encourage immigrants nowadays whereas before they tended to discourage it for social reasons.

however, it's more like a "kicking-the-can-down-the-road" solution than an actual solution. what happens when those immigrants either conform to the country's birth rate or have children who do because they've grown up here and will likely follow the trend? we're back where we started, except the older population we have has just increased. or if the uk ever becomes a much less attractive destination for immigration (arguably already happening).

but what is the real reason behind the low birth rates? feminism (access to birth control, careers for women, less societal pressure to have children)? poor and expensive housing and facilities? simply values and priorities changing? something else? if so, what is the "solution" to that?

low birth rates dont always just mean that the population reduces. if population reduction results in alleviation of some of the issues people have with having children, then possibly. but what if it doesn't? a population staying at significantly below the replacement rate for long period of time doesn't just reduce in size--it disappears.

a population staying at significantly below the replacement rate for long period of time doesn't just reduce in size--it disappears.

Yes - South Korean currently low fertility rate it's for a 100 people 39 kids - 15 grandchildren and 6 great grandkids.

There's also the generational spread - if parenthood is delayed from early 20s to early 40s the gap between the generations is wider - so instead of roughly 20-30 year gaps you start to get 40 - so more people start to be grandparents in their 80s not 50 or 60s.

This is not a parochial UK issue. It's worldwide:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/268083/countries-with-the-lowest-fertility-rates/

What? I am not sure what you are trying to say here. It doesn't seem to make sense. People are not voting Labour because they are keen on mass immigration.

That's a very typically bourgeoisie viewpoint.

Place matters very much to people whose lives are shaped by it materially. That's not an idealist notion, it's a physical reality.

The difference between the groups for whom it matters, and those for whom it doesn't, it sometimes described as the "anywheres" and "somewheres".

It's the level of the nation state within which liberal democracy can function. It's at the level of the nation state that a government can manage an economy and currency for the benefit of citizens.

It's typical of the capitalist class, and the professional class, to be uninterested in national borners, because it's in their economic interests for them to be porous. It's in the economic interests of the working classes and low wage workers that they are not.

This is why working class political parties have historically opposed or wanted to limit the movement of labour. And why. now that the Labour party is mainly composed of the professional classes, that they support it.

TempestTost fair points. I’m made of assorted immigrants, mostly refugees, from various continents. I’d love a sense of place.

The thing is, we don't 'need' a larger population in the same way we need oxygen and water.
It's only because our economic system is a pyramid scheme. Needing an increasing amount of young, working age people to fund old people.

Not exactly. The reasons we need solutions like immigration is just to maintain the SAME amount of young, working age people funding old people - that is, to maintain the same ration between productive workforce and non-productive retirees (and children).

Without immigration, that ratio collapses due to the twin factors of aging population and falling birthrate. And as that happens it becomes impossible to maintain the levels of pension, aged care and state funded healthcare that we are used to and take for granted.

It's not as easy as just "create more infrastructure" though.

There are huga barriers to doing this. Some of the problems now are about bad management, but not all - the costs of what we now consider basic infrastructure, including the Labour element, are just enormous compared to what they used to be.

In some cases there are also serious regulatory roadblocks, and not always for bad reasons. When you get the state pushing building building building with few regulations you get poorly planned cities, poor quality building, and lack of respect for the land.

Some of these problems have been a long time coming. Look at the NHS. The last big investments were under Blair, but he did that by borrowing, and the debt is crippling parts of the heath system still today.

You have a giant problem of not much money, time and materials and labour are scarce, and you can't magic them up without basic economic productivity to fund it.

Yes absolutely. I see this playing out in an interesting way in my small village. Traditionally a place where there was very little population movement but in recent years there has been an influx of Londoners due to improving transport links.

The attitude towards the village is really different depending on whether you’re a blow-in or not. The people whose families have been here for generations are heavily invested. When there is a problem (for example, a road keeps flooding or a path is blocked), one of them will sort it out. Things like new houses or pylons really matter to them because this is their place. People like me (the blow-ins) think, well I like it here but I could easily move to this other village if things went wrong. We don’t have anything like the same level of commitment compared to the people who will never leave.

You're not missing anything, other than the pitiful state of political debate in this country that makes it impossible for people to say out loud how things actually work in an emotive area like immigration.

It is a solution, if we want it to be. Economically it's a no brainer. We may not want it to be, however, for various cultural reasons such as those mentioned on this thread.