Why are we having fewer children? — In Case You Missed It

[0:00] Imagine a world with no children. [0:02] The birth rate is falling. [0:04] The demographic time bomb. [0:05] The country is ageing and shrinking. [0:07] Having children is the biggest regret of my life. [0:10] I'm the girl with the list and this is reason 345 not to have kids. [0:12] How often do you think about the fate and the future of humanity? [0:18] That's a lot to unpack. [0:20] I want to discover what's driving the discussion, debate and discourse around having children. [0:24] We're having less kids, but why? And is it a problem? [0:29] From the BBC, I'm Thea. [0:31] I've come across this graph. [0:39] It's called a population pyramid. [0:41] So it shows us the world's population in 1975. [0:44] At the base, you've got your babies and your toddlers. [0:47] Zero to four. [0:48] The biggest chunk. [0:49] But as you go up the pyramid, each group gets smaller and smaller. [0:53] Until you reach the top and, well, you die. [0:57] Sorry. [0:57] Population pyramids like this are a simple way to show the age and sex breakdown of a population. [1:03] The graph needs to be in the shape of a pyramid for the population to be growing. [1:07] I'm looking at the year 1975. [1:10] And back then, the world was a textbook example of a growing population. [1:14] Lots of young people, few old people and a big solid base to the pyramid. [1:18] But if I switch this to show the UK in 2025, the graph looks pretty different. [1:24] The base, the youngest age groups, are smaller than several of the older brackets. [1:29] And that shift tells a story. The UK has an ageing population. [1:33] After checking the definition of demography, I started searching it online. [1:37] And it's a rabbit hole. [1:40] I'm reading about population collapse, birth rate decline, Gen Z having less sex, [1:45] age in societies, child free by choice, dating app fatigue, situationships. [1:49] I'm also finding phrases like baby deserts, [1:52] fence sitters and tradwives popping up on my feed. [1:55] You can transition into becoming a traditional wife. [1:58] Maybe you've seen some of this stuff too. [2:00] A lot of the content is weighing up the pros and cons of having kids [2:04] or offering advice to people who aren't really sure. [2:07] And the comment sections, well, they can either be really helpful and constructive [2:13] or very, very divisive. [2:16] It's become a cultural battleground. [2:19] Now, fertility rate decline isn't new news. [2:23] But debates about what or who is to blame are not slowing down. [2:27] The arguments I'm seeing tend to fall into one of four categories. [2:32] Do we want to have kids? [2:34] Do we need to have them? [2:35] Whose responsibility is it to have them? [2:38] And why should any of us care anyway? [2:41] So I want to pick it apart. [2:43] And to do this, I'm starting close to home. [2:45] I'm in Scotland. [2:46] Scotland! [2:50] And of the four nations that make up the UK, [2:52] Scotland has the lowest replacement rate. [2:55] Quick explainer. [2:56] A replacement rate, sometimes referred to as a fertility rate, [2:59] is simply the rate that a population procreates to sustain its current number. [3:03] If you take two parents, they need to have two children to sustain the current population [3:07] when their parents die. [3:08] And so the population remains consistent. [3:12] Lose a child and the population reduces. [3:15] The 0.1? [3:16] That's to account for things like gender imbalances, [3:19] infant and child mortality and infertility, [3:22] and for people choosing not to have children. [3:24] The UN says if a country is below a replacement rate of 2.1, [3:28] population ageing accelerates. [3:30] And the fact that a generation does not produce enough children to replace itself [3:33] eventually leads to outright reductions in population, [3:37] i.e. population decline. [3:39] If we look at the replacement rate of the UK nations using the latest data we have, [3:44] Northern Ireland is at 1.64. [3:46] Then comes England and Wales, which are both 1.41. [3:49] And finally, Scotland at 1.24, well below the UN's figure of 2.1. [3:54] How's it going? [3:55] Good, thanks. How are you? [3:56] All right. [3:57] All right, population stuff. [3:59] Yeah. [3:59] I need your help to make sense of it. [4:01] That's Andrew Pickham, a data journalist for BBC News. [4:03] So could you describe what the birth rates are like in Scotland at the moment? [4:08] So we know that last year, the number of babies born in the country was just over 45,000. [4:14] And that hit the headlines because it was actually a record low number, [4:19] the lowest number we've had for more than 160 years since the records began. [4:22] You can see the overall trend here is one of decline, but it's one over a long period of time, [4:29] so it's not necessarily one that people hear about. [4:32] And that's why it's often described as this sort of silent emergency. [4:36] And did you see any other trends appearing in the data? [4:39] Yeah, well, the data tells us more than just the number of babies born, [4:42] actually shows us quite interesting information about [4:45] the age range of mothers. And we can see that the average age is getting older. [4:51] In the 60s, most women were in their 20s when they were given birth. [4:55] In the mid 70s onwards, it's sort of getting into the 30s. [4:59] And today, the average age of a woman given birth in Scotland is between 30 and 40. [5:05] And over the same time period, it's interesting to note as well that the number of teenagers [5:10] given birth has also dropped quite dramatically as well. [5:13] And what about areas? Have you seen differences in the different areas in Scotland? [5:18] So the organisation that pulls all these figures together, the National Records of Scotland, [5:24] they do a bit of work where they work out, so women of childbearing age, [5:30] they work out the average number of babies that you would expect from that group. [5:34] And when you look at that data, it shows us there's a bit of a sort of urban and rural split. [5:40] So you've got Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, they have the lowest fertility rates, [5:47] but Midlovian, East Renfrewshire and Western Isles, they have the highest rates. [5:52] So Scotland is following this trend of fertility decline worldwide? [5:56] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Scotland is not the only place in the world that's dealing [6:00] with this real challenge of women having fewer children. [6:04] If you take Japan, for example, just last year, they recorded 1 million more deaths than births alone. [6:11] Scotland has the same challenge on a smaller scale. It's not been since 2014. We've had more [6:17] births than deaths and that gap has actually widened since then. Interestingly though, the population in [6:24] Scotland has kept growing over the same period and that's mainly down to immigration. [6:29] And I've been coming across this term baby deserts. Could you just tell me a little bit about what that is? [6:36] Yeah, sure. So we've talked about all the different types of data you can get for all these areas of Scotland. [6:42] And we can also look at it by population size and age of that population. And we can drill down to what is effectively your local neighbourhoods. So that's typically between 500 and 1000 people in these neighbourhoods. [6:55] And when you look at this, you can see in the latest population estimates that there are 117 of these neighbourhoods that have no babies registered in them at all and just over 300 that have just one one year old in them. [7:11] And that is, you might think this is perhaps just in the countryside, but it's actually a mix of urban and rural areas. [7:18] One of the major drivers of lower birth rates has been the cost of having kids. In Scotland, research by the Child Poverty Action Group suggests that the cost of raising a child to age 18 is around £250,000 for a couple and about £290,000 for a lone parent. [7:37] The United Nations population fund suggested that 39% of people surveyed that financial limitations would impact the number of children they have. [7:46] Basically, a lot of people feel like it's too expensive. [7:51] And for those having kids, they're also more likely to do it later. In the 1960s, most births were to women in their 20s. [7:58] But since 2012, most babies have been born to women in the 30 to 34 age bracket. [8:03] But it's not only about cost or age. Other factors might include career instability, maternity and paternity leave, housing concerns, climate breakdown, dating in the modern world, fears of war. [8:16] These issues can be described as social infertility. [8:19] To help me make sense of this bigger picture, I'm going to call Stephanie Hegarty, the BBC's population correspondent. [8:25] Well, one of the biggest factors in reducing how many children are being born is the people having no children at all. [8:31] So obviously, there's families choosing to have fewer children. That's a big factor. [8:35] But the people just saying no, they don't want any kids at all is one of the most influential factors. [8:39] And it's just not taboo anymore to make that choice. [8:42] You can imagine before there were always people who maybe didn't want to have kids, but they did it anyway because it was expected of them. [8:48] And we don't have that anymore, at least here. [8:50] I do think there is still social pressure on people to have a family, but it's certainly so much less than it was. [8:57] And again, it's not just here in the UK. That's happening all around the world. [9:02] And what would you say are the most important factors that people are thinking about when they're deciding whether or not to have a baby? [9:10] Well, I think number one for most people is whether they're in a relationship, whether that's a committed, stable relationship, [9:17] whether they want to have a baby with that person. And then I think it comes down to financial factors. [9:22] There was a really interesting report by the UN recently that found that a lot of people want to have a child, [9:29] but just don't feel like they can because of financial pressures, also time pressures. [9:34] Number one, I think, is housing. You know, that's very linked to your financial situation. [9:39] But there's a housing crisis in many different societies across the world. It's not just in this country. [9:44] Then there's a big change in the expectation of what it is to raise a child. [9:48] Parents now are actually spending more time with their children than parents did in the 50s, especially in the West. [9:55] So we're expecting more of that experience, more time, more financial investment. [10:00] So the equation of what it means to have a child has changed dramatically. [10:04] And then there's a profound kind of societal shift. [10:07] Whereas before, say, 30, 40, 50 years ago, you would become an adult, you'd get married, you'd have children. [10:15] And then for men mostly, less so for women, you'd kind of figure out your career afterwards. [10:20] Now we see it completely differently. You become an adult, you figure out what you want to do with your life. [10:25] And once you've kind of figured that out, you decide to have a child. [10:29] We're expecting a lot more stability before we're ready to have kids. [10:33] And gender roles, they've shifted. So how do you think that that's affected things? [10:39] So the fact now that the norm is to have both parents in work has had a huge impact on the number of children that a family can have. [10:48] But interestingly, in the places in the world that have the most extremely low fertility rates, like, say, Japan or South Korea, [10:56] these are modern economies where a lot of women are in the workforce. [10:59] But at the same time, they have really conservative values. [11:02] So often when people have children, it's the mother, it's the woman who's expected to do a lot of the looking after kids, [11:10] looking after elderly parents and doing a lot of the, say, housework, looking after the house at home. [11:15] So you can see logically how for young women in those countries, that is not a very desirable option. [11:21] So where we still have this kind of mismatch between gender equality and modern economies, [11:27] those are places where fertility rates are often really low. [11:30] Remember that population pyramid? [11:32] Well, back in 1950, Japan had a near perfect example of a pyramid depicting a growing population. [11:39] But year on year, that shape has started to change. [11:42] By 1964, the pyramid looked more like a Christmas tree, with most of the population aged 15 to 19 years old. [11:48] 2025 shows the pyramid's base to be thinner than its middle. [11:53] It's no longer a pyramid at all. [11:55] Japan's population decline started from the mid-1970s. [11:58] And it's made it a bit of a case study for what problems countries can expect to face with an aging population. [12:03] As people retire from the workforce, they are seeing increased labour shortages in industries like construction, care work, agriculture and hospitality. [12:11] The effects of low birth rates are also causing concerns for the military, with recruitment shortfalls starting to become an issue. [12:18] With around 30% of Japan's population now over 65, policymakers there are concerned. [12:25] Their Prime Minister has described it as a quiet state of emergency. [12:29] Governments are worried about this because they're looking at how much money is coming in, how many people are paying their taxes, [12:35] and how much money is going out, what they have to pay for. [12:38] And a big cost burden for governments is elderly care and pensions. [12:42] So that's why governments are worried. [12:44] But when it comes to us as individuals, I think it's more about what kind of society we want to live in. [12:50] So if we are living in a world that has fewer children and more older people, will we see growth? [12:57] Will we, instead of economic growth, will we see decline? [13:00] There is a lot of ageism associated with that, you know, that a society that has more old people can't be as dynamic, can't be as exciting. [13:10] So we have to then think about whether we're going to have to change our attitudes to elder people. [13:16] Then we need to think about immigration. [13:18] Do we need to, are we going to think about immigrants differently? [13:21] Right now, our governments are putting in policies to stop immigration. [13:25] In the future where population is declining, are we going to actually be competing with other countries for immigrants? [13:33] So what would a world with fewer children actually look like? [13:37] Well, I suppose we would start to see things like schools would shut down and then universities would shut down. [13:43] And then as fewer people go into the working population, will there be less money being spent? [13:49] Will bars and restaurants and other businesses start shutting down? [13:52] Will there be less innovation and dynamism in the economy? [13:56] You know, we'll have fewer heads knocking together to come up with great ideas to drive growth and change and progress. [14:03] But on the flip side, a world with fewer people is going to have less competition for resources. [14:08] So we're going to see less pressure on the planet, on our water sources, on less carbon emissions. [14:14] You know, how will that affect climate change? [14:16] So what is for sure in all of this is that we are going to see change. [14:21] You know, we've lived in a world where there has been population growth for as long as any of us can remember. [14:26] And we're about to see that change. [14:28] What is for certain is that unless we see a profound shift in all of these trends, we're going to have to adapt. [14:33] I want to hear what you think. [14:36] If you have thoughts on this topic, let me know in the comments. [14:39] And if you want to dive deeper, the BBC has done loads of reporting on population changes across the UK and internationally. [14:47] You can find it here on YouTube or on the BBC News app. [14:50] For me, that's all. [14:52] Thanks for watching.