Politicians must act on falling birth rate crisis urgently

'Deaths are outstripping births for the first time in 50 years'

- Geeta Nargund

A RECENT projection from the Office for National Statistics should alarm us all. It found that the "replacement rate" the term for the ratio by which women have enough babies to sustain population levels stands at two to one.

This means that a girl who turns 18 in the UK this year is likely to have just one child by the age of 35, leading to a continuing drop in the birthrate, which fell to an all-time low of 1.44 in 2023.

We are such an ageing society that deaths are now outstripping births for the first time in half a century an economic crisis in the making. We will be unable to sustain our ageing population if we do not have enough taxpayers and there will be more than 23 million over-65s by 2032, increasing pressure on pensions, health and social care applying pressure on immigration to fill the gap.