In 4 years, 2029, UK deaths will exceed births!

[TheMintCritic]

Just came across this and thought it was wild… according to the ONS, by 2029 the number of deaths in the UK is expected to outnumber the number of births for the first time in decades.

• Our fertility rate is only about 1.5 kids per woman, well below replacement.
• Meanwhile, the population is ageing — all those baby boomers are moving into their 70s and 80s.
• The result? The natural population growth turns negative, meaning any population increase will rely entirely on immigration.

It’s crazy to think that in just 4 years, births won’t even keep up with deaths. Makes you wonder what that’ll mean for schools, NHS, pensions, and housing.

You are lucky that your life circumstances have provided you with children and therefore family. As @KimberleyClark points out, not everyone has that opportunity, and we have to try to live with and make the best of our circumstances.

I am not trying to say that if you don't have a child you should expect to live a lonely life. I know plenty of older people who don't have children and have very full and wonderful lives. I'm saying something entirely different, which is that people should be aware that when you make the decision in your 20s or 30s not to have a child, you're making decisions for yourself for the rest of your life. If you're aware of that and still feel ok with it, great. But it has definitely been the case in my life that younger people have rejected parenthood with a sort of 'ew why would I do that' mentality only to find when they're older that they didn't really understand how they were shaping the course of their entire life.

I understand your situation and I can see how it's a tough one. I might sound a little callous but in my view no one brings any child into a perfect situation, because no one knows what the future holds. The vast majority of people make parenthood work, by hook or by crook. To be honest I think people need to have more faith in themselves.

I totally agree Strawberries. If you read my post you'll see I'm talking about people who make the active choice not to have children, not people who can't have children due to circumstances.

If deaths are going to outweigh births then surely that is good…..more people dying, who are very likely to be older adults coming to a natural end of their life, means the top heavy population demographic will reduce. Which is what everyone is constantly moaning about! Too many old people is what people keep harping on about.

Read the thread.

Same with private pensions, state pension age increase etc. They always claim "no one" knew, "no one" did it, etc., completely ignoring the huge numbers of people who did take out private pensions or join company pension schemes in the mid 80s, who did know, years/decades ago, that state pension age was increasing for women, etc.

Just because they weren't paying attention, they make out that no-one knew, conveniently ignoring all the ones who were engaged, and taking responsibility for themselves, taking advantage of opportunities, etc.

I’m commenting on the OP. I don’t need to read the thread if I don’t want to. Pipe down.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/dec9bd88-9026-4400-ad15-c0a60bf4c23f?shareToken=60f03edc1f0463bea19a380374f2fd

Actually I do think it's a worrying trend for society.
Young people are the future, we will all rely on the younger generation at some point, when people our own age can no longer provide us with health care or do house repairs or grow our food , or are contributing to the economy and paying taxes for public services and state pensions.
My teens/ young adult DC are a bit ambivalent about having DC, they are worried about buying a house, the cost of bringing up children , the loss of freedom , the climate.
I think the housing shortage has massively contributed to this and people grow up later, stay in education longer. At 16 I was working full time, at 25 I'd bought my first house, at 26 I had as married, at 27 I had my first DC (I'm now 54) the trajectory of adulthood has changed hugely.
Most mothers go to work full time now, which is better for their independence and financial security, but it means that probably the majority of parents need to pay for full-time childcare which is massively expensive. But then it is also harder to survive on one salary.
Lifestyle expectations have also increased, we had a load of second hand furniture and household goods when we bought our first house, virtually nothing new, and when we had DC holidays were in the UK and our car was 10 years old.
However when I was a child we rarely went on holiday and the only club /activity I didn't have d was brownies!
So having DC is getting more expensive for each generation.

The thread gives you a very detailed answer to the questions you asked, which is why I said you should do it. I didn't know that your aim was just to throw in an irrelevant comment, sorry.

Catch yourself on. You can't complain there's not enough births and then blame older people for having kids, how the fuck does that work?
Don't worry though because us older folks will definitely be in the more deaths category.
What a fucking disgusting time to be a pensioner, blamed for all society's ills.

Conversely lots of people WITH a child/children aren't relying on them to look after them in old age or even be part of their daily lives. Lots of adult children move abroad and never return to their home towns, lots of adult children move to work/live elsewhere in the UK and only return to their home towns sporadically, and certainly not to provide "care" for the elderly parent(s).

It's a bit of an outdated view that parents expect their children to look after them when they're old. That's not how things are working these days for huge numbers of people.

Our son moved away to a city a few hundred miles away for work the Summer he left University. He won't be returning to our home town to live ever because there are no jobs in commutable distance for his profession. In all likelihood, he'll be emigrating once he's qualified. We have no expectations at all of seeing much of him in person ever again. Yes, he pops "home" occasionally for a weekend or so, and maybe a week at Xmas, but if he emigrates, he probably won't even come "home" for Xmas. It's just the way things are these days.

It never even crossed our minds that he'd be around for us to help us in our old age. Nor should he.

I think a lot of our problems are caused by overpopulation, globally and locally. So I don't see a falling population as a bad thing.

Yes there will be an imbalance between working age adults and the elderly, but I think we should be working on technological solutions to increase the productivity of the working age population to counteract that.

Part of your last sentence is the young's response to oldies always blaming the youngsters for factors outside their control, such as claiming they can't buy a house because of a Netfix subscription or iphone, or blaming them for going to Uni when most decent jobs these days require a degree. It works both ways. The "boomer" complaints are often a response to boomers blaming the youngsters for such things, due to not realising how things have changed so much and how opportunities available to boomers are not available to young people today!

First of all, how do they know what the birth rate will be in 4-5 years?

And secondly, if there are less people being born, less people will need NHS, housing, jobs, pensions, etc. So it will level out. The planet needs less humans. Hopefully, other countries will follow suit.

It's also a temporary problem as within a generation or two, the "boom" will have passed. Shame that politicians didn't plan for it, but hey-ho, we'll just have to bear the pain as best as we can. Awful time, though, to be a younger worker who will be the group most affected to have to pay for it.

There’s a waiting list in my area. Those same nurseries charge a subsidiary per week to counter the ‘free hours’. A lot of our local childcare is also refusing those hours.

’Funded hours’ aren’t free and are term time only and don’t give you a full week. A lot of women would rather be at home with their kids but can’t as we are past being able to survive on one wage.

In ‘your day’ I’m also presuming you had a week in hospital, care in the community after your baby. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. Big woop we get childcare subsidiary to force us back into the workplace. Only need that because childcare is so unaffordable a lot of women were forced to leave the workplace.

Thank you for understanding. I absolutely have thought long and hard about my future life, and I think having a child and family in it would make me so much happier. I certainly wouldn't reject parenthood just because it is 'hard work' or anything like that.

But ultimately I think I have left it too late (not that circumstances allowed me to even try before now) and I just don't think I can bring a child into such a lonely / vulnerable little set up.

The other week there was a family on the bus I was travelling on - two parents and four young kids. The parents were absolutely horrific. Swearing every 30 seconds, shouting, causing chaos and at one point even vaping over the children. At one point the mother struck up a conversation with another woman with a baby. She asked her if she planned to have any more children, and when she said no, she was absolutely outraged - "You can't leave him as an only child! No brothers or sisters!". That really got to me so much. There she was, dragging those children up, yet even she thought the most important thing in the world was family.

The vitriol will transfer to the heirs of all the boomer money. Buckle up Gen X and older millennials, if you inherit any money it will be your turn soon.

I absolutely understand how hard it is i have three adult children two of which bought flats on their own and I know what they went through to get them.
It doesn't help being blamed because we apparently had it easier. Some things were easier but others weren't.
We really need to stop comparing and work together.

Conversely when planning a child you need to consider that may have a life limiting disability and how you will cope with this mentally, financially and emotionally. I think there is a stat that fathers are more likely to leave so can you cope as a single parent? Do you want to? Not to mention that a child is not obligated to love or care for you. Due to accident or illness you may need to care for them for the rest of your life. Therefore I think the only valid reasons to have children is because you really want to and can give them a good life in the society/world we live in.

It doesn't help being blamed because we apparently had it easier. Some things were easier but others weren't.

It's not apparently that older people had it easier when it comes to many financial gains. It's a fact. That doesn't mean every single individual benefited or that it was easy. Just easier...

Well said. Every generation must be receptive to change or everything will collapse and we'll all be worse off.

First of all, how do they know what the birth rate will be in 4-5 years?

We know it won't have increased by any significant factor.

Birth rate depends on number of breeding age women present.

It’s been dropping for a long time no time. So we can predict the likely number of babies coming through.