Falling Birth Rate in UK. 1.44
Discussion
On the news now
https://news.sky.com/story/fertility-rate-in-engla...
So how do we fix this
More immigration
Promote having kids
Accept the UK is going to die out
https://news.sky.com/story/fertility-rate-in-engla...
So how do we fix this
More immigration
Promote having kids
Accept the UK is going to die out
An interesting discussion point, which I was first made aware of via an email from our youngest's (usually over subscribed) primary school, advising that they were looking to start reducing class sizes and staffing numbers due to reduction in intake from next year. I've since also noticed another local primary with a huge banner outside reading "We have availability across all ages", which is in stark contrast to just 8/9 years ago where we struggled (and had to appeal) to get our eldest into the local primary.
Unless you have a strong desire to be a parent, why bother?
We've taken the decision to not have kids, because we have no real urge, and value our spare time and relaxing holidays over appeasing the social norm.
As to the answer....there would need to be some financial incentives I imagine, through extended maternity/paternity leave, like the Scandinavian countries.
We've taken the decision to not have kids, because we have no real urge, and value our spare time and relaxing holidays over appeasing the social norm.
As to the answer....there would need to be some financial incentives I imagine, through extended maternity/paternity leave, like the Scandinavian countries.
Gecko1978 said:
On the news now
https://news.sky.com/story/fertility-rate-in-engla...
So how do we fix this
More immigration
Promote having kids
Accept the UK is going to die out
1. We don'thttps://news.sky.com/story/fertility-rate-in-engla...
So how do we fix this
More immigration
Promote having kids
Accept the UK is going to die out
2. No.
3. No.
4. It isn't.
The world's population has quadrupled in my lifetime. The UK population has increased by some 68%
A re-adjustment is overdue. This will ease the pressure on farmers to grow more and more food. The demand for fuel of every description will decrease. The problem of global warming will be solved, because there will be fewer people on the planet making the place warm. etc, etc.
It's a win win situation..
To maintain a cohesive society population shouldn't reduce without a good plan with a healthy balance between old and young.
The UK is certainly moving into Japan territory with oldies outnumbering the young.
I'm 37, been married for ages and have no children.
How does government fix that? Well they need to get all the services you suddenly need when you have children to be good. NHS, schools, GP, taxes, financial protections, etc.
As a healthy full time worker I don't need the state and have almost no interactions with it. When you have children suddenly you're having daily/weekly interactions and that really seems awful.
The UK is certainly moving into Japan territory with oldies outnumbering the young.
I'm 37, been married for ages and have no children.
How does government fix that? Well they need to get all the services you suddenly need when you have children to be good. NHS, schools, GP, taxes, financial protections, etc.
As a healthy full time worker I don't need the state and have almost no interactions with it. When you have children suddenly you're having daily/weekly interactions and that really seems awful.
Gecko1978 said:
On the news now
https://news.sky.com/story/fertility-rate-in-engla...
So how do we fix this
More immigration
Promote having kids
Accept the UK is going to die out
Let it play out. 8bn people on the planet already up 4bn in just 50 years. Insanity if you ask me, look how fhttps://news.sky.com/story/fertility-rate-in-engla...
So how do we fix this
More immigration
Promote having kids
Accept the UK is going to die out
ked up everything is just to even cope with that many.TX.
Gecko1978 said:
On the news now
https://news.sky.com/story/fertility-rate-in-engla...
So how do we fix this
More immigration
Promote having kids
Accept the UK is going to die out
I'm not sure it needs 'fixing'. https://news.sky.com/story/fertility-rate-in-engla...
So how do we fix this
More immigration
Promote having kids
Accept the UK is going to die out
What's the downside?
Often quoted is that there won't be enough youngsters to support the oldies when they get to 70, or will it be 94 by then? Yet I've read recently that AI will take a lot of jobs. Almost a balance.
On the plus side, there's less demand on schools, NHS, roads, and name your favourite. As demand drops, so does the drain on taxes. House prices will drop as well - or should that be in the downside bit?
A few short years ago, the terror facing the world in 50 years (and therefore always receding) was overpopulation. There would be food riots, contamination of the atmosphere, lack of water - already being practised by the water companies, and similar overdemand for limited resources. Birthrates are dropping in stable(ish) countries, mainly due to, they suggest, the ability of women to control their own fertility. Therefore, the simplest fix is to return women to the role of addendum to the male. Or take away all birth control methods. I would suggest this was all but impossible, but there are states in the USA where this is on the target list.
Countries ruled by religions, such as the islamist ones and weird western ones, like the benighted USA, might buck the trend, but I wonder if it will be for long.
It wasn't so long ago that Japan was predicted to approach 250m population by now. Exponential growth of the population has, it seems, stopped, although it is still, albeit slowly, increasing.
The only thing you can predict is that the predictors will be wrong.
grumbledoak said:
We need to start by asking "why is it happening?" Without that there is no chance of any "fix".
Are people actually less biologically fertile?
Or have we so screwed our families and communities with policy and taxes that no-one thinks they can afford to have them?
This ^.Are people actually less biologically fertile?
Or have we so screwed our families and communities with policy and taxes that no-one thinks they can afford to have them?
If I had to guess, I'd suggest that it's down to there biggies:
- Much less social pressure for when to get married. You used to be considered "on the shelf" if you weren't married in your early 20s.
- Cost of housing has been climbing for decades without people's expectations adjusting. "I can't/don't want to have a kid until I'm a homeowner."
- Seeing other people leaving it later into their 30s/40s to have kids encourages other people to do the same because it makes your 20s/30s into an extended teenage pissup that you can finally afford to fuel with some real cash.
I agree that it doesn't need fixing per se. We shouldn't be putting impediments in the way of people who want to have kids, but it isn't obvious that a reduction in the number of people on the planet is a bad thing in itself.
The challenge is managing the change. An aging population means fewer people in jobs having to support more elderly people. Unless that is accompanied by some serious increases in productivity, that means there's less stuff being produced per capita, and that means people's standard of living will get worse.
Are the working population going to accept that? Is a young worker going to accept that they're having to work harder than previous generations, give more to the state to support the elderly than previous generations and getting a lower standard of living than previous generations?
That feels like "a bit of a gamble" for the elderly. And let's not kid ourselves that having the elderly sitting on a big pile of financial assets somehow fixes this problem.
The challenge is managing the change. An aging population means fewer people in jobs having to support more elderly people. Unless that is accompanied by some serious increases in productivity, that means there's less stuff being produced per capita, and that means people's standard of living will get worse.
Are the working population going to accept that? Is a young worker going to accept that they're having to work harder than previous generations, give more to the state to support the elderly than previous generations and getting a lower standard of living than previous generations?
That feels like "a bit of a gamble" for the elderly. And let's not kid ourselves that having the elderly sitting on a big pile of financial assets somehow fixes this problem.
ATG said:
This ^.
If I had to guess, I'd suggest that it's down to there biggies:
- Much less social pressure for when to get married. You used to be considered "on the shelf" if you weren't married in your early 20s.
- Cost of housing has been climbing for decades without people's expectations adjusting. "I can't/don't want to have a kid until I'm a homeowner."
- Seeing other people leaving it later into their 30s/40s to have kids encourages other people to do the same because it makes your 20s/30s into an extended teenage pissup that you can finally afford to fuel with some real cash.
Some of that.If I had to guess, I'd suggest that it's down to there biggies:
- Much less social pressure for when to get married. You used to be considered "on the shelf" if you weren't married in your early 20s.
- Cost of housing has been climbing for decades without people's expectations adjusting. "I can't/don't want to have a kid until I'm a homeowner."
- Seeing other people leaving it later into their 30s/40s to have kids encourages other people to do the same because it makes your 20s/30s into an extended teenage pissup that you can finally afford to fuel with some real cash.
We also seem to have a Malthusian ruling class that wanted much fewer of us until quite recently.
We have heard loads about how women's rights reduced family sizes. Divorce has been a growth industry, we even have divorce tourism. The bills for the Welfare state Ponzi scheme are coming due. Meanwhile money printing makes everyone else much poorer through inflation, with property the only solid object and population growth the only cure.
Suddenly they seem to have worked out that their power and money is itself Ponzi based and started to panic.
Almost all of the worlds problems are caused by overpopulation.
A dramatic downward trend is welcome and long overdue.
We've been living in a ponzi scheme and it needs to end.
That will come with some pain, but shrug.
As for why is it shrinking.... Becaise of the welfare state. We need kids to look after us in old age. If the state is willing to look after us in old age why go through the pain of kids? Of course we need our kids to "be" the state in future, but that's hidden from us, we all think other people's kids will be made to step up.
A dramatic downward trend is welcome and long overdue.
We've been living in a ponzi scheme and it needs to end.
That will come with some pain, but shrug.
As for why is it shrinking.... Becaise of the welfare state. We need kids to look after us in old age. If the state is willing to look after us in old age why go through the pain of kids? Of course we need our kids to "be" the state in future, but that's hidden from us, we all think other people's kids will be made to step up.
BoRED S2upid said:
I really don’t see how this is a problem for a couple hundred years.
not enough economically productive people are being bred to support the people that are around now - it isn't going to take a couple of hundred years for it to be a problem but likely quite a bit sooner....isaldiri said:
not enough economically productive people are being bred to support the people that are around now - it isn't going to take a couple of hundred years for it to be a problem but likely quite a bit sooner....
The solution to ponzi schemes isn't to carry on with the Ponzi scheme, amd yeah, it hurts.Researchers already got some ideas from experimenting with dense populations of rats and mice. Even with excess resources available, things went badly wrong:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old...
Imagine what's malfunctioning in our subconcious when exposed to vast amounts of randoms. We've evolved for small distributed communities because that's all hunting and gathering could support.
Add in to the mix various toxins, hormones and other ste in food, drink, medicine and the environment.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old...
Imagine what's malfunctioning in our subconcious when exposed to vast amounts of randoms. We've evolved for small distributed communities because that's all hunting and gathering could support.
Add in to the mix various toxins, hormones and other s
te in food, drink, medicine and the environment.Interesting to see so many views of "we don't need to fix anything" already in this thread. I'd be interested if all those who don' think it needs fixing already have a kid or two?
As with several above, my partner and I have no intention of having kids. Doesn't appeal to us in the slightest and I agree with the view that the world is already overpopulated enough and needs a correction or some sort (or at least a slowdown). That's not a common view I find though and whenever I share this view I do tend to get strange and pitying looks, especially around childlessness.
Had a conversation only last week at work, someone asked me if I had kids, I said no and no intention to. They were asking about my plans after my current job ends and I explained I'm in a position where I can pick and choose what I do, in part because no kids to raise. They then decided (unprompted) to explain how that's fine RIGHT NOW but I should think about the virtues fo having a large family for my later life. This person was 14 years older than me, 4 or 5 kids and was from the most populous country on the planet. I didn't argue, simply shared that perhaps my view would change but I can't see it happening and have no plans.
Much like other world issues, many people don't see that it's their problem to tackle and can't see any other view other than their own. They can't see the bigger picture.
As with several above, my partner and I have no intention of having kids. Doesn't appeal to us in the slightest and I agree with the view that the world is already overpopulated enough and needs a correction or some sort (or at least a slowdown). That's not a common view I find though and whenever I share this view I do tend to get strange and pitying looks, especially around childlessness.
Had a conversation only last week at work, someone asked me if I had kids, I said no and no intention to. They were asking about my plans after my current job ends and I explained I'm in a position where I can pick and choose what I do, in part because no kids to raise. They then decided (unprompted) to explain how that's fine RIGHT NOW but I should think about the virtues fo having a large family for my later life. This person was 14 years older than me, 4 or 5 kids and was from the most populous country on the planet. I didn't argue, simply shared that perhaps my view would change but I can't see it happening and have no plans.
Much like other world issues, many people don't see that it's their problem to tackle and can't see any other view other than their own. They can't see the bigger picture.
BikeBikeBIke said:
isaldiri said:
not enough economically productive people are being bred to support the people that are around now - it isn't going to take a couple of hundred years for it to be a problem but likely quite a bit sooner....
The solution to ponzi schemes isn't to carry on with the Ponzi scheme, amd yeah, it hurts.Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff