Britain's doomed demographic destiny

Fertility rates have reached a record low of 1.41 and four in ten of births are to at least one foreign-born parent

The demographics of the United Kingdom are on a bad trajectory. The fertility rate is the lowest since records began; four in ten births in England now have at least one foreign-born parent; and we have a population that is living longer and has more complex care needs, exacerbating an already challenging worker-to-retiree ratio.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have now released information on births in England & Wales for 2024. There were 594,677 births, a slight increase from the 591,072 births in 2023, and the first increase since 2021. In this release, they also released refreshed population data. Despite births increasing in 2024, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) for England & Wales dropped to the lowest level on record: 1.41. The TFR for 2023 was also revised down, from 1.44 to 1.42. These downward revisions were caused by upwards revisions in the total population, and in particular, net migration. The number of births in England & Wales has been recorded since 1838, meaning nearly two hundred years of historical data. If we map the number of births in England & Wales from 1838 to 2024, we can see this visualised:

We can also plot the total fertility rate (TFR) over time. A TFR of 2.1 is required for a population to remain stable from one generation to the next, not counting immigration and assuming mortality levels also remain stable. If TFR drops below 2.1, the population will shrink; if TFR remains steady at 2.1, the population will remain stable; and if TFR is above 2.1, the population will grow. The reason that 2.1 is the replacement rate — not 2.0 — is because not all children survive to adulthood and because slightly more boys are born than girls (even independent of sex-selective abortion). 2.1 is, it should be noted, an average correction. In countries with higher mortality and, in theory, where sex-selective abortion is widespread, the replacement rate might be higher than 2.1.

The TFR for England & Wales has been calculated since 1938. TFR has been below the replacement rate, 2.1, since 1972.

In Scotland, the situation is no different. In 2024, just 45,763 children were born — the lowest since records began.

If we plot Scotland’s TFR, it fares even worse than in England & Wales. The fertility rate in Scotland has been calculated since 1971. It also hit a record low, 1.25, in 2024.

Scotland has seen a big decrease in the number of births in recent decades. The labour shortages this has caused may be part of the reason why politicians in Scotland so often push for Scotland to be granted the right to issue their own visas.

Lastly, we can look at the number of births in Northern Ireland. Curiously, it is possible to see the number of births for Northern Ireland from 1887, well before either the Ulster Covenant or partition. As with both Scotland and England & Wales, these are also down, hitting a record low in 2023, with just 19,962 babies born. It should be noted that births statistics for Northern Ireland are published much later than the statistics for Scotland and England & Wales. It is expected that they will be released sometime between November and December 2025, hence why the figures are only up to 2023, not 2024.

The fertility rate has been calculated in Northern Ireland since 1985, also hitting a record low in 2023. While the fertility rate in Northern Ireland has certainly fared better than in England & Wales or Scotland, it also remains some way below replacement rate.

If we total the number of births in England & Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, and exclude births for 2024 (as we are still waiting for Northern Ireland to publish 2024 statistics), and we also exclude data prior to 1887, as Scotland didn’t start collecting data on the number of births until 1855, with Northern Ireland following in 1887, we can see that for the whole of the United Kingdom, across all regions, births hit a record low in 2023, with just 656,969 babies born.

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Births across the United Kingdom have been below replacement level for around fifty years. As a consequence, the main driver of population growth in Britain is immigration. Since 1970, cumulative net migration into the United Kingdom stands at over 21 million. Some of these people will no longer be living here: some will have arrived on temporary work or study visas, some will have died, migrated elsewhere, returned home, and so on.

When the 2021 Census was conducted, 16.8% of England & Wales was foreign-born — or over ten million people — and this figure won’t include those who arrived during the so-called ‘Boriswave’. There is a fantastic chart on Wikipedia that shows the percentage of the population of England & Wales that is foreign-born, from the 1851 to 2021 Census — note how stable this figure was from 1961 to 1991, with an increase of only 2.3% over a 30-year period, as well as the sharp increase after 1997.

We can already see the impact from decades of mass migration filter through into our demographics. As The Telegraph noted in a recent article, white British children are now a minority in one in four schools, and 72 schools in England do not have a single white British pupil. But school statistics are a delayed metric: most children will start school at four or five, and will remain in some form of education until they turn 18. If you want a more updated picture of the demographic future of a country, you need only look at the ethnicity of births. In the most recent 2024 release for England & Wales, only 53.65% of births were white British, down from 62.89% of births a decade prior in 2014. If this trend continues, where will white British births be in 2034 or 2044?

This level of demographic change is driven by an increasing share of births to foreign-born parents. In 2024, births to mothers and fathers born in the UK hit a record low of 57%, down from 62% in 2021 — or a 5% drop in just three years. For some perspective, in 2011, 64.2% of births were to two UK-born parents, falling to 62% in 2021 — a 2.2% drop over a 10-year period. The rate of demographic change has more than doubled since the Boriswave and will embed itself and continue if they are allowed to settle in the UK and obtain Indefinite Leave to Remain, something that Reform UK have pledged to prevent.

39.5% of births in England & Wales had at least one foreign-born parent. For England specifically, this figure was higher, at 40.4%, meaning 4 in 10 babies born in England last year had at least one foreign-born parent.

See also the increase since 2021; the speed and scale of the demographic change taking place since the Boriswave is without precedent, at least outside periods of war or conquest. This is why there have been calls to hold an emergency census, which is possible under the Census Act 1920. The 2021 Census won’t have counted the millions of legal immigrants that have arrived since it was conducted. For instance, in year-end June 2023, net migration stood at 906,000 — essentially four to five years’ worth of ‘normal’ immigration crammed into a single year.

The decadal censuses are also unlikely to count the illegal immigrant population. Back in 2020, Pew Research released a report that estimated at the end of 2017 there could have been as many as 1.2 million illegal immigrants in the UK. Pew have recently revised this figure down, now estimating between 700,000-900,000 illegal migrants living in the UK at the end of 2017. Regardless, the figure is certainly much higher now. Since 2018, over 180,000 illegal migrants have arrived via small boat alone, and that’s before we consider those who arrived via lorry, undetected boats, other routes, or overstay their visa.

Irrespective of illegal migration, which remains a major issue, the main driver of demographic change in the UK has always been legal migration. Between June 2024 and June 2025, the Home Office extended over 1 million existing visas, granted 436,000 new study visas, 286,000 new work visas, 71,000 new family reunification visas, granted settlement (Indefinite Leave to Remain) to 163,000 people and handed out citizenship to 257,000 people — all in just twelve months.

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Successive Governments, Labour and Conservative, rather than try to address falling birth rates or take unpopular decisions — like increasing the retirement age, as countries like Denmark are doing — have instead opted for the quick and easy answers, at least in theory and in the short term: liberalise your immigration system and import people, regardless of the long-term demographic, social and cultural consequences. People like Fraser Nelson will argue that importing people as a fix to declining birth rates is no big deal and that immigration will provide a steady stream of workers, who will all assimilate and become British.

This is delusional, and does not represent a long-term solution in any case. Birth rates are declining globally: even if substituting a lack of births by importing workers didn’t have any negative consequences (which it does), this only buys you a few decades, if that.

Even the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) appear to be wising up to the fact that relying on immigrants is not a long-term solution to the structural problems this country faces, especially given that the OBR has made some laughable assumptions about migrants — like they arrive age 25 and don’t bring any dependants, something that is completely out of alignment with the reality of post-Brexit migration.

If we are to fix the myriad of problems this country has — from a declining host majority population, the highest tax burden since the Second World War, nearly 4% of GDP spent on debt interest, an NHS waiting list that is over 7 million, despite record funding, and, as a recent OBR report makes clear, unsustainable levels of debt, projected to hit 270% of GDP by 2070 — then demographics deserve to be taken more seriously in our politics.

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This article was written by Charlie Cole, a Pimlico Journal contributor. Have a pitch? Send it to submissions@pimlicojournal.co.uk.

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