UK fertility rate drops by 18.8% in 12 years

[MidnightPatrol]

The UK has the fastest falling fertility rate in the G7.

2022 saw the lowest number of births for 20 years.

The current TFR is 1.49 births per woman.

What do you think the reason for this is, and what could be done to reverse the trend?

news.sky.com/story/amp/britains-fertility-rate-falling-faster-than-any-other-g7-country-with-austerity-thought-to-be-a-principal-factor-13232314

The expense. In my home country childcare is heavily invested in and almost free. So you have better trained early childhood practitioners, better practitioner to child ratio and you pay a drop in the ocean of what it costs here. Houses are extremely expensive now compared to the prices (and wages) of my parents generation. The time when you’re fertile is the time when you need to be saving for a house. Unless you have parents who will help many people prioritise buying a house over having a child.

The social housing has been sold off and not replenished so there are no properties for young families who want to save to buy their own home.

House prices! Needing two incomes to purchase a house.

Low wages, high childcare costs.

Chronic illnesses afflicting people at a younger age.

Internet and changes in way people communicate i.e things have moved online, less face-to-face contact have made people more introverted, more likely to be single, unable to save for housing.

People don’t feel the need to populate the world no more, people find it’s a depressing world - climate change, wars, austerity etc.

Housing and childcare
Plus mixed care. Some people get good healthcare, others are not so lucky.

Cost of living, especially childcare costs.

Leaving it later to start a family (partially due to the above - saving for house, waiting until career is more advanced)

Also taking longer before being ready to settle down - difficulty with socialising during and post Covid, rise of online dating apps filled with ... less than honest men perhaps not as keen to settle down as profiles might suggest.

Widespread press coverage of issues with education system

Widespread press coverage of issues around accessing decent medical care - dentist, GP, and let's not forget the awful things coming out about maternity care in certain areas.

For some, concerns over the climate change - is it fair to bring children into this world? etc

General disillusionment with society.

But for most, sheer practicalities based around ££££££.

Housing crisis mainly imo. Takes too long to get on the housing ladder. Rent or mortgage also takes up too big a percentage of people's salary.... making other things unaffordable

Expense. We’d love a third child but simply cannot afford it.

I don't know why this is being touted as a bad thing. In coverage about all the issues with aging population, they talk about this being a bottleneck that will ease off as the birth rate goes down, so why is anyone trying to keep it up? Especially as the actually population hasn't declined due to net migration. It doesn't make sense to want to keep pumping babies out at the same rate, as though British born babies are needed to sustain at the high levels of the last couple of generations when all was that bit better.

Definitely financial. Major reason why we aren't having the three children we talked about as a young couple 10 years ago.

I'd have loved another baby if I could have afforded it. Can barely afford the cat!

I’d love to see data on what is causing the “low birth rate” numerically. Is it more people having no children at all (that could be cost or other worries, not finding the right partner in time, but also much more acceptance of being child free), or much more people just having one, or it being increasingly rare to have three or more. Obviously it’s a combination of those, but it would be interesting to know if one is more responsible for the overall lowering than others.

I think the most common answer I hear in ‘real life’ is cost.

Buying property is so expensive, and most people I know have only just bought their first house by their mid thirties, so have huge mortgages at the point they are thinking about children.

For me personally - I’d like a second but the cost of childcare is just so high. Two sets of fees at once would be ~£3-4k a month, and I suspect by the time the eldest is in school making it more affordable, the moment will have passed.

I suspect a lot of people are in the same boat.

I also think culturally the UK is not a family friendly place. People are actually quite hostile to children in a way they're not in other countries.

I'm mid 20s I think it's two fold

On one hand people my age have the choice now and we can see just how tough parenting is and some of us are saying that's not for me. I'm just choosing not to have children.

On the other hand, I think it all starts with the housing crisis, increasingly my friends are in old can no longer afford to even rent a one bedroom apartment they are flat sharing as a couple, they can't save for a deposit and renting with children as hell a lot of Landlord will refuse people because they can get more money from a HMO.
Then, if you get over the issue of housing childcare is so expensive, and flexibility with employers. I also think a lot of women just see how the burden always falls on them and saying yeah I don't want to do that. I'd rather be in a couple with dual income but no kids.

but if the government was serious about this, they would really just start building social housing on mass, it's costing councils more to put people in temporary accommodation than it is just to go on a mass building program of social housing. Labour parrot on about how we will get more building done but developers won't build if people can't afford them, and they're not going to increase the supply that much that it brings house prices down

Is anyone on here is put off by the fear that the next generation will have harder lives than we do?

People have the choice now - they can travel, not have kids, have kids, have them early, have them late etc

It's not how it used to be - married and kids by 20!

I also think the long term contraceptive use of current 20-30 year olds is a big factor - the first generation to be put on the pill at 11+!

Our society certainly isn't made up for families with more than 2 children. Most cars cannot fit 3 car seats, a family hotel room is for up to 4, a trip somewhere on a family ticket is 2+2 and you can't sit next to more than one child per parent on rides.

I have 2 and have no idea how people manage more! We only managed 2 as we had a lot of grandparent help in the years before school and a deliberately larger age gap to avoid nursery fee crossover. Also got onto the property ladder before 2013, so it was a lot cheaper back then. No way I could have bought a house if started 10 years later.

As someone with a large family I feel sad to read stories like this. I love having a large family and couldn't imagine life without them. I live in a part of the UK though where housing is affordable. I know many with at least 3 children per family.

It’s all the snarky posters on Mumsnet saying, “Don’t have children if you can’t afford them,” and then vast swathes of the population reading the posts and thinking “shit! They’re right!” and changing their life plans.

I dont actually want the trend to reverse the planet is over populated and we have to stop relying on ever increasing growth in populations.
The whole economic model is a mess. I actually we need global shift in what is valued in terms of the jobs paid good salaries and the expectation of constant capitalist 'growth'

The astronomical cost of housing! And childcare.

Birth rate rather than fertility rate, surely?

Well if it’s a question of fertility, it seems to be down to processed food, endocrine disruptors in day to day products, alcohol and caffeine.

If it’s generally just about people having fewer children, people are waiting longer for a number of reasons - most of them relate to expense.

To throw out a social reason, men are not settling down til later, if at all, which is getting late for women to have larger families. I realise someone women delay starting families too for career reasons, but I feel like the balance of power is with men who are happy with porn and dating apps.

Well I and some people I know who were put on the pill age of 12/13 did it because of horrific periods.

the kind painkillers won’t touch

later diagnosed with endo

they need to do something about endo, take women’s health seriously, so many go 10 plus years to get a diagnosis, being fobbed off, by the time they diagnosed, women are infertile

This. And with climate change too, why the hell would we want to reverse the trend? Do we really need more humans about the place?