[Other Sport] Fertility rates fall to record low

[Shropshire Seagull]

Nah, it just means the boomers have six houses each

And when the boomers die, as they surely will one day. Who will inherit these six houses you speak of?

 

[basque seagull]

Are you suggesting that people have stopped breeding because they can't afford a mortgage?

During the era of big wage increases and full employment, when the likes of my parents could buy a 3 bed semi the likes of which were beyond my grasp at an equivalent age, the birth rate plummeted (see ringed part of graph below).

View attachment 191427

The reality is that it is still the poorest in society who are having the most kids, despite the massive gulf now between 3 times salary and entry level house prices.

The map below shows that the highest birth rates are in the shittiest areas surrounding London and the shittier bits of other regions, Bolton and suchlike, not central Manchester or central Leeds. There is a stark difference between Medway to Sittingbourne (lower house prices) and Faversham to Canterbury (higher house prices) that maps in the opposite direction to age to what you suggest. But it maps perfectly to wealth.

Births in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

Annual summary statistics of live births, stillbirths and fertility rates.

www.ons.gov.uk

View attachment 191423

In London, the richest bits right in the centre all have the lower birth rates, and the areas of highest birth rate are the poorer areas with a high Asian (NW, NE) and white (SE) demographic (race isn't the main driver).

View attachment 191424

Overall the correlation is not perfect but it still maps best to money - the better off don't breed regardless of the cost of housing.

To be fair some of that is cultural. For Muslims getting married and having kids is seen as an obligatory part of life not a choice.

 

[Zeberdi]

I think you are misunderstanding the issue. We need to at least replace the people who are leaving the workplace with more people who will work, so we can pay for the services those older people need.

It is actually incredibly simple and yet many people seem to make it some sort of nimby “too many people” thing. This country is something like 2% paved over. There is AMPLE room for the houses we need for the population, and we need policies to encourage people to have kids. It’s not just about the money, although it’s likely one factor.

This country currently has nowhere near enough young people being born. Your kids and grandkids have it quite a bit worse than you did, and when they get to retirement there won’t be one.

I’m not misunderstanding the issues, you just don’t agree with my perspective on it. You also fail to understand the changing nature of the job market, the existing reasons for labour shortage or what over population is doing to the planet.

Existing potential workforce

• Unemployment is 4% with 1.39 million people over the age of 16 unemployed
• 9.26 million people aged 16-64 are economically inactive , and the inactivity rate was 21.8%. Inactivity levels increased by around 10,000 over the last year.
  
  We need to get our existing workforce age back into work.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9366/#:~:text=Key%20figures&text=Employment%20levels%20increased%20by%20around,people%20aged%2016%2B%20were%20unemployed.

Environmental issue

“People need food to survive, and as the world’s population grows, so too does the demand for food. To meet this demand:

• agricultural development has caused deforestation on a large scale. The shrinking forests are unable to counteract the effects of the increasing carbon emissions, causing temperatures to rise.
• This, in turn, has caused desertification, especially in the already vulnerable Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
• The resulting loss of arable land means less food production, which threatens to leave millions undernourished.
• A related problem is water scarcity, caused by increased salinization and the drying up of rivers, lakes, and streams.”

In the UK - There is NOT ample room for new housing if you care about the environment- I don’t want to live in a Country paved over by single occupancy housing or given over to intensive farming or covered in windfarms to meet the growing energy demands of the global population - I would like our valuable green areas left for leisure and wildlife. The current government has relaxed planning laws and introduced a new category of undeveloped land that can be built on called ‘grey sites’ which is actually prime scrub habitat, home to Nightingales and scarce warblers as well as beetles and other insects - this indicating that already the value of undeveloped land is under threat. We are losing habitat and thus our wildlife at an alarming rate;

“The UK’s wildlife is continuing to decline according to a new landmark study published today. Already classified as one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries, nearly one in six of the more than ten thousand species assessed (16%) are at risk of being lost from Great Britain”.

Landmark report shows UK wildlife’s devastating decline | The Wildlife Trusts

• World-leading study, State of Nature, finds no let-up in the decline of our wildlife, with one in six species at risk of being lost from Great Britain [1]. • State of Nature, the most comprehensive report on UK wildlife, also shows that the species studied have, on average, declined by 19% in...

www.wildlifetrusts.org

Immigration

Since Brexit, the immigrant workforce has fallen by 1% - ’There are large shortfalls in EU-origin workers in transportation and storage, wholesale and retail, accommodation and food, manufacturing, construction, and administration and support’. Many non-EU immigrants are seeking asylum or economic opportunities directly as a result of the West’s geo-political policies in Africa, Asia and the ME - we need to see asylum and poverty in developing countries in the context of Western proxy wars, Western workforce exploitation and natural resource theft.

There are plenty of potential working age people that come to the UK looking for work from Countries far worse off than people living in the UK - trouble is people don’t want them here. Yet immigrants form a vital part of the workforce but too many people don’t see it like that - they have succumbed to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory yet instead of admitting this, they construct arguments about long queues, shortage of housing, drain on healthcare because the Country is ‘already too crowded’ .

We can’t have it both ways. Either the Country is overpopulated or we allow an immigrant workforce to make up the shortfall in employment in the key areas listed above.

Adoption

The adoption rate in the UK is falling yet there are thousands of children waiting to be adopted. Children that end up bounced around the care system until they are 18 with associated MH problems because they don’t have the love and support of their own family.

If people are putting off having children the cost of fertility treatments (already costing the NHS £68 million a year) is likely to continue to rise - maybe some of that expenditure could be spent on tax incentives to help encourage adoption?

Adoption: Calls for families to adopt amid rate decline

Children with disabilities or behavioural issues wait almost a year longer than others for adoption.

www.bbc.co.uk

I don’t misunderstand the issue, I just see the problems and therefore the possible solutions from a different perspective than you do.

 

[Nobby]

how do you suppose maternity care was 70 or more years ago, with no NHS, when there was double the birth rate?

rather than trying to blame something, might simply be women just dont want children so much these days.

Might be. Could well be
But having a child was a lot more safe forty years ago than it is now.
Probably not the reason that the stats are down but the NHS is now a huge mess overall unfortunately

 

[Peteinblack]

If the concern is about too few workers in the years ahead, won't many (most?) jobs be replaced by AI in the next 10-20 years?

In which case, trying to increase the birthrate now will simply mean 30-40 million permanently unemployed by 2045 or sooner?

 

[Curious Orange]

If the concern is about too few workers in the years ahead, won't many (most?) jobs be replaced by AI in the next 10-20 years?

In which case, trying to increase the birthrate now will simply mean 30-40 million permanently unemployed by 2045 or sooner?

We'd need a new economic model if that scenario came to pass, as there would be a serious shortfall in the tax take if everyone was unemployed - so how would the government cover pensions and benefits?

 

[Guinness Boy]

In addition to helping young people buy/rent affordable housing, the Government needs to modify the tax system to encourage young people to have kids. In Hungary, monthly taxable income is reduced for each additional child. After four or more children the mother is completely exempt from income taxes.

It’s not working though.

 

[BBassic]

We're on the fence about kids.

We've both got good jobs with a good income and think we'd make good parents.

But neither of us are yet comfortable with the idea of giving all of our time over to this life we've created.

We're both ambitious people and current thinking is that we would lose, or replace, part of that ambition in order to fully, and necessarily, devote ourselves to caring for and nurturing this kid.

The loss of self and the limitations of freedoms is the hurdle for us.

When you thrown in an ongoing climate disaster and a potentially looming World War 3 we're erring on the side of perhaps not.

It's got to be a 100% decision - as in we 100% want to do this or we just won't.

 

[FatSuperman]

And when the boomers die, as they surely will one day. Who will inherit these six houses you speak of?

They will all be rolled up into a company called Boomer LLC (incorporated in a tax haven) and used as rental properties. Nobody will know where the money goes but it's suspected a bunch of people that sit on the House of Lords rejecting any regulation of the rental industry.

Either that or they all go to one immortal uber-boomer.

 

[DJ NOBO]

We're on the fence about kids.

We've both got good jobs with a good income and think we'd make good parents.

But neither of us are yet comfortable with the idea of giving all of our time over to this life we've created.

We're both ambitious people and current thinking is that we would lose, or replace, part of that ambition in order to fully, and necessarily, devote ourselves to caring for and nurturing this kid.

The loss of self and the limitations of freedoms is the hurdle for us.

When you thrown in an ongoing climate disaster and a potentially looming World War 3 we're erring on the side of perhaps not.

It's got to be a 100% decision - as in we 100% want to do this or we just won't.

Sounds reasonable but beware becoming one of those couples who gets to late 30s/early 40s and then one or both of them panics.
This happens a lot.

 

[chickens]

If the concern is about too few workers in the years ahead, won't many (most?) jobs be replaced by AI in the next 10-20 years?

In which case, trying to increase the birthrate now will simply mean 30-40 million permanently unemployed by 2045 or sooner?

I don’t think this has yet been fully understood. Robotics companies are shifting from vanity projects, with the realisation that to succeed their robots don’t just need to work, they need to work fast, and make sense financially.

Combined with AI, for the first time in human history, humans risk obsolescence, and will eventually become a legacy technology as far as employment goes. The tipping point where it makes no sense to employ a person to do a job slower, less efficiently, and at greater cost than a robot/AI is now here.

The change will start slowly, robotics makers don’t yet have a robot for every job. Cost is still a huge factor. The problem is, once one player in an industry successfully implements an AI/robotics solution cheaper than human employees, the other players in that industry will be forced to follow suit, or find themselves unable to compete.

I’m afraid the idea that we need loads of people for the workforce is a fallacy based on historical data from a pre-AI/robotics age.

There is no political party out there being honest with us about what the future holds, or offering an alternative vision of what society should look like at the point that work becomes an affectation rather than a requirement for progress. And that to me is more terrifying than the slow move away from human labour to AI/robotic labour.

TLDR - the biggest change in human history is happening now. There is no political honesty being displayed by any party as to what society can or should look like on the other side of this change.

 

[FatSuperman]

I’m not misunderstanding the issues, you just don’t agree with my perspective on it. You also fail to understand the changing nature of the job market, the existing reasons for labour shortage or what over population is doing to the planet.

Existing potential workforce

• Unemployment is 4% with 1.39 million people over the age of 16 unemployed
• 9.26 million people aged 16-64 are economically inactive , and the inactivity rate was 21.8%. Inactivity levels increased by around 10,000 over the last year.
  
  We need to get our existing workforce age back into work.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9366/#:~:text=Key%20figures&text=Employment%20levels%20increased%20by%20around,people%20aged%2016%2B%20were%20unemployed.

Environmental issue

“People need food to survive, and as the world’s population grows, so too does the demand for food. To meet this demand:

• agricultural development has caused deforestation on a large scale. The shrinking forests are unable to counteract the effects of the increasing carbon emissions, causing temperatures to rise.
• This, in turn, has caused desertification, especially in the already vulnerable Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
• The resulting loss of arable land means less food production, which threatens to leave millions undernourished.
• A related problem is water scarcity, caused by increased salinization and the drying up of rivers, lakes, and streams.”

In the UK - There is NOT ample room for new housing if you care about the environment- I don’t want to live in a Country paved over by single occupancy housing or given over to intensive farming or covered in windfarms to meet the growing energy demands of the global population - I would like our valuable green areas left for leisure and wildlife. The current government has relaxed planning laws and introduced a new category of undeveloped land that can be built on called ‘grey sites’ which is actually prime scrub habitat, home to Nightingales and scarce warblers as well as beetles and other insects - this indicating that already the value of undeveloped land is under threat. We are losing habitat and thus our wildlife at an alarming rate;

“The UK’s wildlife is continuing to decline according to a new landmark study published today. Already classified as one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries, nearly one in six of the more than ten thousand species assessed (16%) are at risk of being lost from Great Britain”.

Landmark report shows UK wildlife’s devastating decline | The Wildlife Trusts

• World-leading study, State of Nature, finds no let-up in the decline of our wildlife, with one in six species at risk of being lost from Great Britain [1]. • State of Nature, the most comprehensive report on UK wildlife, also shows that the species studied have, on average, declined by 19% in...

www.wildlifetrusts.org

Immigration

Since Brexit, the immigrant workforce has fallen by 1% - ’There are large shortfalls in EU-origin workers in transportation and storage, wholesale and retail, accommodation and food, manufacturing, construction, and administration and support’. Many non-EU immigrants are seeking asylum or economic opportunities directly as a result of the West’s geo-political policies in Africa, Asia and the ME - we need to see asylum and poverty in developing countries in the context of Western proxy wars, Western workforce exploitation and natural resource theft.

There are plenty of potential working age people that come to the UK looking for work from Countries far worse off than people living in the UK - trouble is people don’t want them here. Yet immigrants form a vital part of the workforce but too many people don’t see it like that - they have succumbed to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory yet instead of admitting this, they construct arguments about long queues, shortage of housing, drain on healthcare because the Country is ‘already too crowded’ .

We can’t have it both ways. Either the Country is overpopulated or we allow an immigrant workforce to make up the shortfall in employment in the key areas listed above.

Adoption

The adoption rate in the UK is falling yet there are thousands of children waiting to be adopted. Children that end up bounced around the care system until they are 18 with associated MH problems because they don’t have the love and support of their own family.

If people are putting off having children the cost of fertility treatments (already costing the NHS £68 million a year) is likely to continue to rise - maybe some of that expenditure could be spent on tax incentives to help encourage adoption?

Adoption: Calls for families to adopt amid rate decline

Children with disabilities or behavioural issues wait almost a year longer than others for adoption.

www.bbc.co.uk

I don’t misunderstand the issue, I just see the problems and therefore the possible solutions from a different perspective than you do.

The difference between us is not that we disagree on the causes. It's that you are talking about possible reasons and I'm simply talking about the problem. Nobody actually knows why people have stopped having kids, but let's be honest it's not due to too much money or not enough money, or too little housing or too many immigrants. It's likely to be far more nuanced and wrapped up with many reasons, including women being championed to have decent careers. I don't know how to solve it, but I do know it needs to be solved. I also know that we are not likely to give it the correct focus until it's far too late and we have a crashing population.

We can sit here and argue about housing and immigrants all day, the economic reality is that a smaller number of people working cannot support a larger number of people not working. If you look at the data, there are more people working now than ever before, earning an average salary higher than ever before. Yes, the labour market will change, jobs will be replaced by machines, but new jobs will emerge. There will always be shocks I agree, but broadly the market will weather it.

Today, 19% of the population are over 65, and by 2072 this will be 27%. The shape of the population is critical, because as we move toward an inverted pyramid, of fewer and fewer working people, the burden of paying for us old folk will fall and fewer shoulders. It's going to get even harder for our grandkids and their children. And the policies and societal change we need must happen now, if we are to lessen the impact. The replacement rate needs to be 2 - so every two people need to produce 2 children. If we can achieve that, then the population will stay stable - it won't increase and it won't decrease. That will be perfection.

America should be watching Europe for warning signs and ideas, because they aren't far behind us - and ironically it has been immigration that has saved them from being where we are.

 

[albionalba]

There are plenty of potential working age people that come to the UK looking for work from Countries far worse off than people living in the UK - trouble is people don’t want them here. Yet immigrants form a vital part of the workforce but too many people don’t see it like that - they have succumbed to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory yet instead of admitting this, they construct arguments about long queues, shortage of housing, drain on healthcare because the Country is ‘already too crowded’ .

We can’t have it both ways. Either the Country is overpopulated or we allow an immigrant workforce to make up the shortfall in employment in the key areas listed above.

I agree entirely with the above. I often wonder what the full, humane and equitable (competitive) selection and mobilisation cost would be to address this in a structured way and capitalise on the benefits such folk could bring. By that I mean having a decent, medium-term immigrant visa scheme (with conversion to residency after x years of taxpaying etc) along with proper training, housing etc. It's a solution almost impossible to conceive (especially in terms of ensuring that existing residents weren't disadvantaged or had less preferential opportunities). It would be interesting to see how AI and big data tools could be used to manage, model, integrate and plan some substantial test cohorts as a pilot to support the case, with risks of the inevitable individual fails transparently stated and planning to avoid ghettoisation etc. I also agree, the squealing about such an innovative approach would almost certainly kill the opportunity before it ever delivered. Given the UK is now one vast, connected blob of delivered-to-door-fast-food-fat hurtling towards oblivion, having a "we're hiring" approach to the country might be the only chance we have.

 

[beorhthelm]

I think you are misunderstanding the issue. We need to at least replace the people who are leaving the workplace with more people who will work, so we can pay for the services those older people need.

It is actually incredibly simple and yet many people seem to make it some sort of nimby “too many people” thing. This country is something like 2% paved over. There is AMPLE room for the houses we need for the population, and we need policies to encourage people to have kids. It’s not just about the money, although it’s likely one factor.

This country currently has nowhere near enough young people being born. Your kids and grandkids have it quite a bit worse than you did, and when they get to retirement there won’t be one.

we're told we need the population to increase, but then next page we're told technology, robots, AI etc will make people unemployed. we only need large populations to sustain pensions if we don't save for pensions in our life time, so only need an ever expanding health service if we dont look after our health. we could probably manage a steadily declining population if we planned for that and changed behaviours. a large proportion of the population is economically inactive or unproductive, indicating we could lose some number without affecting our lifestyles. in other words, we need to challenge the notion we must increase the population, because it's probably only convention and there are other approaches available.

 

[FatSuperman]

We're on the fence about kids.

We've both got good jobs with a good income and think we'd make good parents.

But neither of us are yet comfortable with the idea of giving all of our time over to this life we've created.

We're both ambitious people and current thinking is that we would lose, or replace, part of that ambition in order to fully, and necessarily, devote ourselves to caring for and nurturing this kid.

The loss of self and the limitations of freedoms is the hurdle for us.

When you thrown in an ongoing climate disaster and a potentially looming World War 3 we're erring on the side of perhaps not.

It's got to be a 100% decision - as in we 100% want to do this or we just won't.

I totally understand you on this, but one thing I would advise is that in the Excel spreadsheet of 'should we have kids', you will never be able to make the sums work. YOU are always giving up too much of your life for somebody else to be brought into this world - and they don't even exist so it's not really much of a decision.

My wife and I spoke about this sort of thing a little bit, and I just said if we keep on down this route I can guarantee we won't have kids. It will never be the right time, there will always be the next promotion. So we stopped worrying and just decided to see what would happen. I'm now 45, we have three kids, who are obviously frustrating but also absolutely everything. It is far shorter a time than you realise before the eldest is old enough to watch the others while you go and do something for the evening - and we are lucky enough to have parents nearby who will even have the kids whilst Mrs Fats and I go on holiday together

With kids, the days are long but the years fly by

 

[Skuller]

The only solution, if young people are not reproducing, is mass immigration... which typically doesn't go down too well.

Using immigration to boost growth can only be a short term solution. Longer-term, those who immigrate stop being productive and cause an even greater demand on tax revenues to support them. It’s a downward spiral. What’s needed is more balance with the people we’ve got. Get more people off “the sick”, discourage early retirement (says someone who retired at 60), and train people into more productive jobs. What’s critical is not growth itself, but growth per working-age person.

 

[FatSuperman]

we're told we need the population to increase, but then next page we're told technology, robots, AI etc will make people unemployed. we only need large populations to sustain pensions if we don't save for pensions in our life time, so only need an ever expanding health service if we dont look after our health. we could probably manage a steadily declining population if we planned for that and changed behaviours. a large proportion of the population is economically inactive or unproductive, indicating we could lose some number without affecting our lifestyles. in other words, we need to challenge the notion we must increase the population, because it's probably only convention and there are other approaches available.

We do not need to increase the population. We need to maintain the population. Pensioners aren't paying much into the public purse, so all of those services that income tax pays for are not really being covered by pensions - I think it's a push to expect people to save enough to cover the shortfall in millions of people not being born. More pensioners than ever before are already having to pay more into the coffers, and get less benefits. And the graph only goes one way at the moment.

 

[Skuller]

View attachment 191427

From the graph, it looks like we need a good old-fashioned war (hot or cold).

 

[Curious Orange]

I totally understand you on this, but one thing I would advise is that in the Excel spreadsheet of 'should we have kids', you will never be able to make the sums work. YOU are always giving up too much of your life for somebody else to be brought into this world - and they don't even exist so it's not really much of a decision.

My wife and I spoke about this sort of thing a little bit, and I just said if we keep on down this route I can guarantee we won't have kids. It will never be the right time, there will always be the next promotion. So we stopped worrying and just decided to see what would happen. I'm now 45, we have three kids, who are obviously frustrating but also absolutely everything. It is far shorter a time than you realise before the eldest is old enough to watch the others while you go and do something for the evening - and we are lucky enough to have parents nearby who will even have the kids whilst Mrs Fats and I go on holiday together

With kids, the days are long but the years fly by

I tried to write a reply to @BBassic, so I'm glad you've put it much more eloquently than I could. They are small for a very short period of time.

 

[chickens]

Using immigration to boost growth can only be a short term solution. Longer-term, those who immigrate stop being productive and cause an even greater demand on tax revenues to support them. It’s a downward spiral. What’s needed is more balance with the people we’ve got. Get more people off “the sick”, discourage early retirement (says someone who retired at 60), and train people into more productive jobs. What’s critical is not growth itself, but growth per working-age person.

Having a functioning health service would get hundreds of thousands of people off the sick. Retiring later is happening anyway. But I’m not convinced that employment opportunities will grow significantly over the next 30 years. I suspect that employment opportunities will fall, especially for the less skilled, because that’s low-hanging fruit for robotics companies.

Boston Dynamics already have their “Stretch” model unloading shipping containers for DHL, hard physical work in freezing conditions in winter, and boiling temperatures in summer. Their Spot model provides monitoring services in environments that are potentially hazardous to humans.

Their new humanoid robot (the new version of Atlas) isn’t on general sale yet, but is working at Hyundai as part of its beta testing prior to full launch, we don’t know what role(s) it’s performing, but we know the aim is to have it available to purchase in a 2-3 year timeframe, and history tells us that once the big breakthroughs are made, future revisions will centre around cost, battery life, and industry specific customisations/variants being offered.

What do we do with a population where 60% aren’t required to be economically productive but still need to eat, be housed, see doctors, want to indulge their preferred leisure activities? I don’t believe we need “moar people.”

Perhaps low birth rates reflect the reality of where civilisation is headed.