Address 'political infertility' to grow our population

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.

- Geeta Narqund

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 con-tinuing 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.

This is a widespread problem. Birth rates have been declining across Europe for more than 50 years. In 2022, the total fertility rate (TFR) in the EU was 1.46 live births per woman, almost half of what it was in 1960. I use the phrase "political infertility" to describe this crisis as it has been caused by policy decisions that prevent fair and equal access to assisted reproduction services, or create socio-economic conditions that deter couples from starting a family.

FAILING to address the causes of population decline is therefore a political decision.