According to statistics from the Centre for Progressive Policy (CPP) – a think-tank that works on how to increase productivity and share wealth – it dropped by 18.8 per cent between 2010-22, to an average of 1.49 children per woman.
This means that our birth rate has fallen more than any other G7 nation’s in those twelve years. The G7 nations – also known as “advanced economies” – include Britain, Germany, Italy, Canada, France Japan and the United States.
The trend of falling birth rates has been downward across the world for some time now. Globally, the average number of children born per woman halved from around five in 1950 to 2.2 in 2021.
The fact that people are having fewer babies is cause for concern. Not for retrograde reasons which would work well as a plot line in The Handmaid’s Tale but, instead, because population decline will have a serious impact on our economy. There will be fewer workers and, therefore, our productivity will decline too. Not to mention the societal impact of having fewer young people to drive culture forward and innovate.
Until now it was thought that the reasons for falling birth rates across the world were broadly comparable between countries. These included lifestyle factors, such as more young people going in to higher education and deciding to have children later.
However, the CPP’s analysis (which was commissioned by Sky News) tells a far more nuanced story about what’s going on here in Britain.
Italy came just behind Britain, with the second-largest birth rate fall at 14.4 per cent. The United States came third with a fall of 13.8 per cent, followed by Canada at 13.3, France at 9.9, and then Japan at 6.5.
It’s the cost of living and the fact they sell anything off to private companies that hike the price of everything to ridiculous levels so why would you want to raise a child struggling on poverty wages and add extra stress into a relationship
Not bothered with the article. The issues are simple
1: People are not getting on the property ladder early enough.
2: When they do have a child you need 2 incomes to keep afloat.
3: Needing 2 incomes means you need child care. That’s incredibly high in price even with the new paid hours. Full time care can still hit £1,000 plus a month with the new funding.
5: You may now need a bigger house a larger mortgage for the next child.
4: Once you’ve had 1 child through that and going to school you have e another 3 years of of the same pain if you want another.
5: Once they start going the school you still both parents need to work. That means you have to pay for wrap around care at school. For two kids that’s easily another £320 a month.
Article covers costs of things being a problem. Well no f’cking shit sherlock. Welcome to the 21st century, where corporations and buisnesses extract as much wealth from you as possible, where houses are being purposefully under-built to keep prices and therefore rents high. Where services essential to life, such as WATER have been sold off to private companies to make a buck off while completely neglecting their infastructure. Where childcare, one of the most simplest and essential services needed for working families, is among the most expensive in the world in order to line pockets.
You want to know what’s crushing the UK birth rates? Unregulated and unchecked rampant greed coming at us from every corner and angle pricing us out of basic living. But hey, at least the companies are turning a profit the Government can tax or improve their own personal investments.
IMO for quite a long time policies in the UK have been geared towards the older generation. The simple reason for this is that they vote in greater numbers. If a party has policies that are less generous to older people, they simply won’t make it into power.
This has resulted in triple-lock state pensions, even though many of these pensioners have benefitted from extremely generous final salary pension schemes. And even the thought of taking away winter fuel allowance is causing outrage in some sections of the press.
Meanwhile, for younger people, they have the well known issues of very high house prices/rent, unprecedented energy costs, high student loans, stagnant jobs market/pay, higher pension contributions, etc and that’s without having any children.
Once you add in children, the childcare costs are frankly horrific – they can quite easily be the same or greater than their mortgage/rent payments. Unless they are on very high pay it’s just unaffordable. It’s possible that one partner stays at home to look after the child, but most couples need 2 incomes to get by.
And if they can put themselves through the financial strain and upheaval of having a child, the chances are that they would stick with just the one.
Me and my partner both work, average out around £60,000 a year. My wife would love 5 kids, I would like 3, we have 1 and will likely stop at 2. We support my elderly mum and help with my disabled nephew, outside of food I spend less than £25 on myself and it’s a real struggle.
We arent going without or falling into debt, I’m keeping us in the black, but if we had 2 more kids I have no doubt in my mind we would suffer.
But I don’t want to be working into my 80’s just to make sure my kids don’t suffer the neglect I suffered from a poor upbringing.
6 comments
According to statistics from the Centre for Progressive Policy (CPP) – a think-tank that works on how to increase productivity and share wealth – it dropped by 18.8 per cent between 2010-22, to an average of 1.49 children per woman.
This means that our birth rate has fallen more than any other G7 nation’s in those twelve years. The G7 nations – also known as “advanced economies” – include Britain, Germany, Italy, Canada, France Japan and the United States.
The trend of falling birth rates has been downward across the world for some time now. Globally, the average number of children born per woman halved from around five in 1950 to 2.2 in 2021.
The fact that people are having fewer babies is cause for concern. Not for retrograde reasons which would work well as a plot line in The Handmaid’s Tale but, instead, because population decline will have a serious impact on our economy. There will be fewer workers and, therefore, our productivity will decline too. Not to mention the societal impact of having fewer young people to drive culture forward and innovate.
Until now it was thought that the reasons for falling birth rates across the world were broadly comparable between countries. These included lifestyle factors, such as more young people going in to higher education and deciding to have children later.
However, the CPP’s analysis (which was commissioned by Sky News) tells a far more nuanced story about what’s going on here in Britain.
Italy came just behind Britain, with the second-largest birth rate fall at 14.4 per cent. The United States came third with a fall of 13.8 per cent, followed by Canada at 13.3, France at 9.9, and then Japan at 6.5.
So, what makes Britain so uniquely bad?
**Read the full article here:** [https://inews.co.uk/news/housing/britain-birth-rate-falling-why-3325481](https://inews.co.uk/news/housing/britain-birth-rate-falling-why-3325481)
It’s the cost of living and the fact they sell anything off to private companies that hike the price of everything to ridiculous levels so why would you want to raise a child struggling on poverty wages and add extra stress into a relationship
Not bothered with the article. The issues are simple
1: People are not getting on the property ladder early enough.
2: When they do have a child you need 2 incomes to keep afloat.
3: Needing 2 incomes means you need child care. That’s incredibly high in price even with the new paid hours. Full time care can still hit £1,000 plus a month with the new funding.
5: You may now need a bigger house a larger mortgage for the next child.
4: Once you’ve had 1 child through that and going to school you have e another 3 years of of the same pain if you want another.
5: Once they start going the school you still both parents need to work. That means you have to pay for wrap around care at school. For two kids that’s easily another £320 a month.
Article covers costs of things being a problem. Well no f’cking shit sherlock. Welcome to the 21st century, where corporations and buisnesses extract as much wealth from you as possible, where houses are being purposefully under-built to keep prices and therefore rents high. Where services essential to life, such as WATER have been sold off to private companies to make a buck off while completely neglecting their infastructure. Where childcare, one of the most simplest and essential services needed for working families, is among the most expensive in the world in order to line pockets.
You want to know what’s crushing the UK birth rates? Unregulated and unchecked rampant greed coming at us from every corner and angle pricing us out of basic living. But hey, at least the companies are turning a profit the Government can tax or improve their own personal investments.
IMO for quite a long time policies in the UK have been geared towards the older generation. The simple reason for this is that they vote in greater numbers. If a party has policies that are less generous to older people, they simply won’t make it into power.
This has resulted in triple-lock state pensions, even though many of these pensioners have benefitted from extremely generous final salary pension schemes. And even the thought of taking away winter fuel allowance is causing outrage in some sections of the press.
Meanwhile, for younger people, they have the well known issues of very high house prices/rent, unprecedented energy costs, high student loans, stagnant jobs market/pay, higher pension contributions, etc and that’s without having any children.
Once you add in children, the childcare costs are frankly horrific – they can quite easily be the same or greater than their mortgage/rent payments. Unless they are on very high pay it’s just unaffordable. It’s possible that one partner stays at home to look after the child, but most couples need 2 incomes to get by.
And if they can put themselves through the financial strain and upheaval of having a child, the chances are that they would stick with just the one.
Me and my partner both work, average out around £60,000 a year. My wife would love 5 kids, I would like 3, we have 1 and will likely stop at 2. We support my elderly mum and help with my disabled nephew, outside of food I spend less than £25 on myself and it’s a real struggle.
We arent going without or falling into debt, I’m keeping us in the black, but if we had 2 more kids I have no doubt in my mind we would suffer.
But I don’t want to be working into my 80’s just to make sure my kids don’t suffer the neglect I suffered from a poor upbringing.