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.

And yet big families like mine get shouted at and heckled for “ruining the planet”.
My kids could end up caring for those hecklers, either as care workers or doctors etc, so maybe people could think twice before shouting vile comments.

Most of the comments are from the baby boomer age range, so quite frankly I couldn’t currently care less about their needing care as the population ages.

I know I will one day be in their shoes and elderly and in need of care myself, but I don’t tend to make nasty comments to mums with their young children just going about their day.

Have you actually been "heckled"? How many kids have you got to attract that kind of attention?

Then why in the name of God are we being told we need to build over most of the countryside?

Because falling birth rates don't necessarily equal population decline. People are living longer, in households of fewer people and rely upon migration to staff health and social care.

So what we really need is high-density housing - 1/2 bedroom flats, not big detached houses with multiple bedrooms and bathrooms which is what I am seeing all over the country (and I travel around a lot).

Not building enough - and not building right type of housing but what makes the developer the most money - are both issues.

Older family member have looked at downsizing - the possible money released is not worth the hassle and the uncertainty of it - plus we sell on bedrooms in UK not sq footage and post retirment they spend more time in house in living areas than prior so don't want to lose that space even when don't need the bedrooms.

Yes but i think it's more 2/3 flats and maisonettes we need, not little 1 beds. Medium sized housing, suitable for couples wfh, young families and retirees alike. There's loads of it in Europe, but we it doesn't seem to exist here.
And incentives for downsizing!

Nope. Even countries that are extremely family-friendly (eg Denmark) have plummeting birth rates. The reality is that the best indicator of falling birth rates is women’s education. The more highly educated women are, the fewer (and later) they have children.

The elephant in the room is that increasingly women simply don’t want to have children, or to only have one, regardless of external factors. But rather than simply accept this we pretend that they would have more children if only x (where x is better childcare, more maternity leave, tax incentives etc). But in reality none of this makes a blind bit of difference.

I'm "prattling" on bc I was asked to clarify, can you not read or something?

And good for you, do you want a medal? Let's see how it all goes and who ends up with the stress induced illness, shall we? :)

I'm sorry that happened to you. I witnessed something similar here last year, a young woman yelled at for "shitting out" kids.

Good. We can't continue to fill the planet with more and more human beings ad infinitum.

In 2000 the global population was around 6 billion. Just 20 years later in 2020 it reached 7.8 billion. By 2040 they anticipate the it will reach 9.2 billion. That is genuinely horrific.

This appears to be the biggest thing - the education of women. I wonder though, if there had never been patriarchy would the birth rate ever have been as high at it was at it's peak? If women had freedom from the start perhaps things would be the same as they are now. Perhaps the system was artificial all along.

Reminds me of some of the points in this video:

@OutsideLookingOut well yeah, even in the absence of patriarchy birth rates would have remained high due to the historical absence of effective contraception.

Because the reality is that most people will act to benefit their own families. Thatcher was prime minister for 11 years, so the majority were happy with their standard of living.

I wonder though if women the following would have impacted rates:

• having a choice to be married or partnered up
• having the choice when to have sex ( the absence of religion telling you your body belongs to your spouse),
• a lack of societal pressure
• wise women who knew about herbs would not be called witches or limited in their studies…

Just a musing though as we can’t ever know

But this overlooks advances in ageing research. Serious money is being poured into this right now, and progress is speeding up. I heard a guy who works in the field say that they feel like the Wright brothers and the aeroplane. In the early stages, when all they could manage was a crappy wooden thing that bounced along the field and barely got off the ground, everyone laughed. Within 80 years we had landed on the Moon. Within 10-20 years we will have the first generation of drugs to slow, and even reverse, ageing. There are just too many things in the pipeline, from senolytic drugs to gene editing and medical nanobots, not to mention AI. By mid-century average lifespans could be 130-150. In other words, people won't be dying and making room.

The world is insanely overpopulated. In 1900 there were a billion humans. By 1960 that had trebled to three billion. It's now eight billion and we're going to hit ten billion mid-century. Africa's birth rate is so high the African population is going to double – right in the middle of climate change.

How are China, S.Korea & Japan coping? They seem to have rapidly aging populations, low net migratoin and somehow continue on without terrible financial collapse.

Seems doable.

i’m not familiar enough with Japan or S Korea to comment but in China they cope because there’s effectively no old age pension and the public health service is much less comprehensive. Therefore the public coffers are less burdened by the costs of old age because your welfare entitlements are minimal. I lived in HK for 15 years and if older people don’t have family to support them they basically work until they drop ( v common to see v elderly people collecting cardboard or cans to recycle) , often living in a subdivision or a cage home. I’m not sure the UK is quite ready for that.

The baby bonus in Australia did have an effect, though its long term ones have yet to be evaluated:

https://e61.in/cash-for-kids-what-australias-baby-bonus-tells-us-about-fertility-policy/

With improvement in technology along with the fact that globally we are burning through resources potentially it will be better to have a population that is not growing (albeit corrections are not without pain)

Re the death rate - with the boomer generation there will be a period where this is higher as this generation comes to end of life.

Globally I hope the populations stop increasing - China and India are set to reach huge numbers - the earth cannot support this and the impact of pollution and climate change means that a correction globally will happen one way or another imo

Well said. I chose not to have children and I'm now 66 - and I never feel lonely, even though I have no family (no siblings, no partner, parents dead). I'm retired and also very happy. Some of my friends are still having to offer help and support to their adult children and their families and I'm just happy I'm not in that position. When I'm old and can no longer look after myself I will be more than happy to move into a home, but even if I had children I wouldn't expect them to look after me, just as my parents didn't expect me to look after them.

Everyone moans about over population ( a legitimate concern)...this iscthe solution!
Everyone moand about immigration...this is one rwason why it is a good idea...hardly any brirs wantvto do care work.

I don't think we should breed to lookafter the elderly. Good on women for putting themselves first..

In the neighbourhood I used to live in there were only two families with young children. One of those families had six kids, the other five. I'm pretty sure no-one "heckled" them. That poster must know some pretty strange people!

It’s not really about physically looking after them (although it obviously can be), it’s more that the tax working people pay, pays for the services that we rely on in older age, like nurses and Drs, pensions, state care, and if there isn’t the tax receipts, those services will have to be cut, or people will have to fund them themselves.

It’s not a reason to have a child, but we can focus on the idea of physically looking after older people, and it isn’t that, it’s the paying for it that’s the issue.

Basically you need around a ratio of 4 workers to one retired person, and we don’t have that now, and it’ll be closer to 2:1 in the future. Which means if an older person costs £40,000 a year, that’s all on the shoulders of one worker.

It’s obviously more complex than that, but that’s the idea.

Its not about who will look after you though, it’s about who will pay for it if you can’t.

If you own a house and sell it for a £200,000 profit and then require high level care for 10 years, that money will be long gone, and the state will care for you - and that’s coming from tax of someone who is working now.

My parents sometimes say “well I’ve paid my taxes” and that’s true - but that was to pay for older people who already needed care. It’s not like it goes into an individual pot ready for you personally.

And in the future many people will have even less because houses are so expensive that they will either have rented or have put less of their own money away for their future.