Concerned about depopulation

[Shawlshare]

AIBU to think the threat of depopulation is being massively underestimated in the UK?

I am early 50s, 3 kids and have lots of friends, young professionals in their 30s involved in the same hobby as me and nobody is having kids. Nobody wants them. People can’t afford accommodation big enough for kids, cannot afford childcare and find day to day life trying to stay ahead of the cost of living crisis tiring enough. They want to spend the weekend doing what they want to do, which is fair enough, but the UK will rapidly become extinct if this goes on for long.

South Korea is likely to become extinct as a country within 4 generations do to similar issues. I can see the UK going the same way. It’s scary and sad. I can’t see it reversing though as any hint of free childcare / flexible working etc etc is politically unpopular with so many. Anyone else concerned? What’s the solution?

Poor and workless people are having as many children as they want.

no they aren't 🙄

I think a lot of people have their head in the sand about the multitude of issues that follow from a declining birth rate.

Yep

Indeed. If there was the half UK population with the same demographic spread that we have currently it’s no issue, but when we get to one worker to 3 pensioners it becomes a massive issue. And those 3 workers are so exhausted they’ll have fewer and fewer children themselves.

We will adapt.

if we had wanted to do something about it, the time for that was the 1990s (and we were aware of the issue then - I can remember one of those BBC ‘docu dramas’ that covered it).

Populations wax and wane. So long as we’re not actively reducing the numbers from the living, I’m fine with it.

There will be a movement of people.
And a balance will be found.

Farage's speech was just about the public side of the "the replacement" conspiracy which is causing so much damage right now. That anything those lot want (more British babies, you can define British with a certain skin tone if you like), if it's something Reform want it's almost certainly better to do the opposite.

eaten up more school places, smaller classes and so on!

schools in London are already closing or merging, it isn't viable to keep them going with smaller class sizes despite many parents thinking it's a positive.

www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/news-and-press-releases/2025/continued-drop-school-places-demand-creates-impossible-choices-london

If there was the half UK population with the same demographic spread that we have currently it’s no issue, but when we get to one worker to 3 pensioners it becomes a massive issue. And those 3 workers are so exhausted they’ll have fewer and fewer children themselves.

I find it genuinely baffling that so many don't seem to understand the financial implications of an older population

@OxfordInkling when have we had a mainly older population?

It’s fine the Radfords are going to repopulate most of the UK for us. 😂

seriously though YABU. There isn’t enough resources in the world to keep populating at the rate we were originally going at. It’s a good thing.

Does this take into account the ones who aren’t actually living in the U.K - the benefit tourists?

They have homes abroad, will happily admit to only claiming benefits in the U.K. This is usually identified as the children don’t attend school which sets off alarm bells, but they’ll come back a few times a year to attend and occupy the house they rent.
The entire system is broken. I’m a fraud manager dealing with these type of cases. We have carers getting carers allowance and the carer lives in another country! The situation is dire, we don’t have enough resources or the infrastructure to deal with the amount of people coming in to the U.K. I doubt these studies take these figures into account at all.

It won't be that there will be no one in the UK it's just that the population of the UK will be very different. It will be the migrant children having children. It’ll be a very different U.K.

There is an increasing movement to get women out of the workforce and back in the home to provide babies and care for elderly relatives so the state won't have to pay for childcare or social care. Read between the lines!

The growing desire to remove discrimination rights, everyone cheers along if it means fewer brown doctors, but it also means women of childbaring or menopausal age.

Get the women dependent on men again so they have to provide sex and domestic/care duties with very little security, because you can bet your house the men won't have any financial obligations to go with any of this, and then all society's (read straight white male) problems will be solved.

Don't fall for it OP. If any of your children or grandchildren are female for their sake you should reject the Reform poison.

There are around 800,000 legal migrants to the UK every year.
It won't be that there will be no one in the UK it's just that the population of the UK will be very different. It will be the migrant children having children and so on...

Declining birth rates is all nonsense in my opinion, the headline of “ Birthrates have more than halved”
in 1965 Birth rates were 2.03% and we added nearly 64million people to the world.
2024 Birth rates were 0.87 and we added over 70 million people to the world.

Since 1955 the average has been 75 million a year.

the chart that will affect us the most is living longer, in 1965 the average age in the world was just under 21, now it is near enough 31.

It will be the migrant children having children and so on...

Migrants tend to adopt similar patterns to the native population eg also have less dc

@frozendaisy I think it's quite alarming tbh, for both the women and the elderly who will have no family to care for them.

I mean really depopulation would be wonderful news for the planet. The problem is the transition phase, when there aren't enough workers to support a huge ageing population.

But once that hump is over then it's something to celebrate. Humans are a blight on the planet.

Assisted Dying.

That's what the government is hoping will offset the burden of care for the elderly which includes everyone 50+ and upwards. Currently the sell is for the terminally sick.

As it becomes accepted, I'm sure it will eventually become 'Dignity in choosing how you leave' (And guilt over not doing so quickly enough).

I suspect the boundaries for age as regards working and retiring will be pushed close to 80

But the boundary for being considered old and no longer of great help to society will diminish to at least 55

You cannot have an increasingly individualist society and one that simultaneously cares well for the elderly communistically.

Humans are a blight on the planet.

I don't really understand this narrative from another human 😆

I also think it's a good thing. The world population is not sustainable with our current living standards. We're destroying the resources and ecosystems that we rely upon. An aging population will be tricky to manage in the short term, but ultimately it's more likely to lead to a sustainable human race.

Better that the population decreases through people choosing not to have children, then via famine or resource-wars.

You cannot have an increasingly individualist society and one that simultaneously cares well for the elderly communistically.

Exactly & what I find terrifying!

o

It’s sad for a societal point of view too. Not just traditions being lost, but in South Korea rural areas are becoming depopulated rapidly. If you live in a village of 30 people that halves, it’s lonely, and you are likely to move to a more urban area. Rather selfishly I was hoping to retire more rurally, but that’s looking less likely.

We plan to sell up soon regardless as our large, expensive house is very unlikely to be much of an asset in 40 years when our children inherit it if the population has halved by then. Use the cash to fund our retirement instead.

An aging population will be tricky to manage in the short term

It's going to take decades to play out & whilst short in the earths lifetime it will impact my parents, me, my dc & potentially my gc.

I think humans have delusions of grandeur when it comes to destroying the planet. It will keep on doing its thing long after we are all gone. We are just a dot on its timeline. We can certainly make it a worse place for us to live on though.

That’s irrelevant. We’ve had demographic change over millennia. We are a species that got to the top of the pile through intelligence, not physical fighting ability. We will adapt to the new demographic as well.

If we face it, we can do it smoothly. Alternatively there will be health care collapse and all the old people drop dead fairly fast due to an inability to cope generally and pharmaceutical supply chains collapsing.

I think that we will manage it moderately well, when a bumpy start forces us to face up to the reality. It’s amazing what humans do when they have just a bit of motivation.

If the growth and consumption of the entire human race doesn’t slow drastically we won’t have a habitable planet before long anyway, so none of this will matter.