BBC Health has this today:
Women in England and Wales had an average of 1.44 children between 2022 and 2023, the lowest rate on record.
Only 591,072 babies were born in 2023, fewer than in any year since 1977 and a fall of more than 14,000 on the previous year, figures from the Office for National Statistics, external showed. For countries to maintain their populations, the fertility rate needs to be around 2.1 children per woman. Experts say the government could introduce some policies to help.
“The government could implement immediate interventions… such as offering longer paid parental leave, more funding for childcare for working parents and more funding for fertility treatments in the NHS,” said Prof Bassel H. Al Wattar, from Anglia Ruskin University.
Prof Al Wattar seems to take for granted that this is bad news. Not everyone agrees with that:
Fertility rates are falling across the globe – even in places, such as sub-Saharan Africa, where they remain high. This is good for women, families, societies and the environment. So why do we keep hearing that the world needs babies, with angst in the media about maternity wards closing in Italy and ghost cities in China?
The longer range answer is that our notion of a healthy, vibrant society is still rooted in the past. The inevitable byproduct of the demographic transition is that populations age, in a chronological sense, but life expectancy, and particularly healthy life expectancy, have increased dramatically over the last half-century. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/08/why-declining-birth-rates-are-good-news-for-life-on-ear
How is Scotland doing?
In the report, Annual Births, Deaths, Marriages and other vital events for 2022, statisticians also highlight that Scotland’s Total Fertility Rate has fallen to a new low. At 1.28 it’s down from 1.30 in 2021.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
As I keep on saying, headlines like that one annoy me. (Not yours, Prof!)
Fertility rates are NOT falling. The Birth Rate is falling.
Young people aren’t – on the whole – as far as I’m aware, any less fertile than their predecessors. (I don’t want to be thought insensitive. I realise that sometimes there are problems conceiving – and I applaud the help available from ScotGov for IVF attempts.).
There are a variety of reasons for deciding not to have children – often that they can’t afford to have one. Of course, if the MSM admitted it wasn’t a fertility problem, they’d have to go into what was causing the drop in the Birth Rate.
And we can’t have that, now can we?
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I think it’s true young people are choosing not to have kids not least because of financial reasons but also they must see what the boomers and those before them have done and are doing to the planet, and be doubtful about the future for most humans being on a shoogly peg. Unless you have an underground city bunker with all the trappings as that Facebook guy has, or a rocket to Mars, it’s not looking good on Earth.
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“Fertility rates are falling across the globe – even in places, such as sub-Saharan Africa, where they remain high. This is good for women, families, societies and the environment. So why do we keep hearing that the world needs babies, with angst in the media about maternity wards closing in Italy and ghost cities in China?
The longer range answer is that our notion of a healthy, vibrant society is still rooted in the past. The inevitable byproduct of the demographic transition is that populations age, in a chronological sense, but life expectancy, and particularly healthy life expectancy, have increased dramatically over the last half-century.“
I think the first paragraph is correct in that in the long term human population should, at least, remain stable. It is “good for women, families, societies and the environment.“
As for the 2nd, that’s a bit more complicated. And I’m not as sure as the writer that “our notion of a healthy, vibrant society is still rooted in the past.”
It assumes that our society will continue to experience longer, healthy lives. It seems to assume these will be available to all. Given the fact that life expectancy seems to be decreasing and (eg) the NHS is under threat that won’t necessarily be the case in the future.
If we manage to get this happy, healthy Utopia, I’ll be very pleased. But I remember when the falling birth rate was going to mean smaller classes, better teacher-pupil ratios etc. Must have blinked and missed that…
Also, a vibrant society implies energy and growth. I think it reasonable to suppose that a younger “demographic” with stability, hope and plans for the future is essential – wherever in the world they may be. The falling birth rate may well be an indication that our younger people don’t, in a significant proportion of cases, don’t have that stability and hope.
In Scotland’s case specifically, we need more young people to address the current population imbalance. We have the jobs. We have the potential for economic growth. We just need an influx of the correct “demographic”.
Oh – and the separate Visa arrangements that we aren’t ‘allowed’ would help.
But we’d have to have full autonomy for that, wouldn’t we?
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