THE article by Alan Simpson (“Demographic ‘time bomb a huge threat to the economy’”) and the analysis by Professor Alan Wright (“Our future prosperity is dependent on our ability to attract foreign workers”, both The Herald, December 8) pick up demographic concerns of immediate economic concern to the country.
However, you do not pause to address why we are where we are. In essence, low birth rates are a symptom of bad government and economic distress.
The fact that we need skilled people on the scale indicated is a reflection of education and training failures dating back some time. It’s easier and cheaper to poach trained people from abroad so a succession of governments has sought to save more money by cutting back on education. Unfortunately, the ease with which migration has filled this vacuum has meant that the issue has been glossed over.
So, too, has the issue of low birth rates, which are of more fundamental concern. Birth rates are a useful indicator of the overarching health and wellbeing of a nation and should be monitored closely and government policy fine tuned to maintain a healthy society.
The recent international declines in birth rates and the causes, including in the UK, should therefore be of concern. Happy couples, with adequate income and housing, want to have children. This is a reason why people should be asking: why is the birth rate so low?
My first introduction to demography came through reading HG Wells’s Outline of History back in the 1960s. In the section addressing the Roman Empire he observed that the prevailing birth rate only matched the necessary replacement rate to maintain continuity. He acknowledged his speculation for the cause of the low birth rate was bold.
However, he concluded that it was due to the repressive regime that existed in Roman times. He believed that happiness and a buoyant economy were key to positive fertility rates. This viewpoint is still held by most demographers I’ve met.
In my urban planning career, where population is a key factor, I found ready evidence of this. For example, within recent times we have the post-war baby boom and the mini-boom in the early 1960s coinciding with Harold Macmillan’s “You’ve never had it so good” period. In 2011 I attended a university conference where demographers were puzzled by the then recent increase in the birth rate that was not supported by the happiness-positive economic factor.
The informal conclusion at that time was women’s biological clocks were kicking in. The age at which fertile women had been gradually increasing in recent decades and this cohort of older women were at risk of hitting the menopausal wall. This kind of “desperation” is a poor reflection on the country.
Is it any surprise that the birth rate has declined in many European countries, including the UK, in recent times? Young couples are so much worse off than their parents.
They are increasingly poorly paid in a “flexible” job market, increasingly unable to afford to buy a house and facing the high costs of child rearing. It has become inevitable that British children are going to be worse off than their parents. This might not have been so true if UK governments had paid attention to national fertility rates and considered the factors that influenced them.
In post-war France there were concerns at the low birth rate and it provided incentives for couples to have more children. This also occurred later in Singapore too, where there were concerns at the low birth rate. So at least some nations keep their eye on the ball. It’s a pity that governments in the UK continue not to do so, as your articles make clear.
John Walls,
50 Weymouth Drive,
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