- May 8, 2018
- 10,742
The youth must have listened to Micky Flanagan
how do you suppose maternity care was 70 or more years ago, with no NHS, when there was double the birth rate?Maternity care is also so devastatingly hit and miss in this country that people are coming away from 1 birth swearing never again. Physically, emotionally and mentally broken from the experience.
I don't know anyone who has given birth in the last 5 years who doesn't have birth trauma or serious ongoing medical issues. They love their children, but are not prepared to do it again.
The NHS is 76 years old. Even before that, the local midwife knew their patients. When I had my two, I never saw the same midwife twice, so when it came to the births, all they had were notes on BP, and if you were lucky, your blood type.how do you suppose maternity care was 70 or more years ago, with no NHS, when there was double the birth rate?
rather than trying to blame something, might simply be women just dont want children so much these days.
Eventually the supply and demand chain has to change.Don't think the boomers get it, do they.
Average first time buyer age is 34 now... and that's more likely to be a flat unsuitable for raising a family.
Then there's the cost of child care - the options are either the prospective mum leaving her job, or lose half your salary on child care.
Young people just can't afford kids... and it's a very concerning issue.
Try and see beyond national boundaries and also update your analysis to the 2020s.No country can allow its population to decrease. Population growth is required for economic growth, as a population ages and no longer contributes to the economy, while requiring care. The tax can only from the working young.
The only solution, if young people are not reproducing, is mass immigration... which typically doesn't go down too well.
Surely if the population declines then we eventually solve the housing shortage?Try and see beyond national boundaries and also update your analysis to the 2020s.
The worldβs population is still growing and is already unsustainable. Countries can let their populations decrease- we are no longer living in the industrial age that requires large proportion of the population working in productive industry or manual labour.
We are living in the technological age where blue collar traditional jobs in production/transport/printing etc simply do not exist as they did 25 years ago - it is a myth to think we need to keep increasing the work force. Those traditional jobs are disappearing . Taken over by AI and Robotics. The job market is contracting. It is also offshored in a way it wasnβt 50 years ago.
We are short of housing because we are short of land that we can build houses on in this Country without destroying green corridors for wildlife, meadows and natural pastures and downlands etc
If young people canβt afford to have children, it is because of the increasingly wide poverty gap and a few megalithic multinationals accumulating the lion share of wealth into an increasingly fewer number of hands. The wealth is there it is just concentrated into too few hands.
If fertility is the issue, then as I said above, there are millions upon millions of children in need of adoption.
Itβs not even just the youngsters. Itβs us married types in our mid to late 30s and early 40s.Don't think the boomers get it, do they.
Average first time buyer age is 34 now... and that's more likely to be a flat unsuitable for raising a family.
Then there's the cost of child care - the options are either the prospective mum leaving her job, or lose half your salary on child care.
Young people just can't afford kids... and it's a very concerning issue.
Many of you may have, but many under 40 will disagree. Salaries have completely stagnated, despite ever increasing house prices, inflation has hit across the board elsewhere, interest rates on mortgages are now huge which adds more pressure on huge mortgages, big debts from uni, higher taxβ¦It is a classic phenomenon of increased wealth. Regardless of all the stuff we hear about poverty, a majority live lives now with opportunity undreamt of during the 1960s or 70s. The one glaring exception is home ownership for first time buyers. That aside.... we have never had it so good.
And when people become wealthy and have leisure time and leisure activities they stop breeding.
The converse is true. Discussed on NSC ad nauseam. In the early 20th century white (which was everyone) working class couples had loads of kids. My granny was one of ten. Peasants all over the world breed like flies. The middle classes, with wealth and leisure, largely don't. Unless they are on a mission (like Boris the Liar, and his weird 19th century chum, Moggy).
I think you are misunderstanding the issue. We need to at least replace the people who are leaving the workplace with more people who will work, so we can pay for the services those older people need.Try and see beyond national boundaries and also update your analysis to the 2020s.
The worldβs population is still growing and is already unsustainable. Countries can let their populations decrease- we are no longer living in the industrial age that requires large proportion of the population working in productive industry or manual labour.
We are living in the technological age where blue collar traditional jobs in production/transport/printing etc simply do not exist as they did 25 years ago - it is a myth to think we need to keep increasing the work force. Those traditional jobs are disappearing . Taken over by AI and Robotics. The job market is contracting. It is also offshored in a way it wasnβt 50 years ago.
We are short of housing because we are short of land that we can build houses on in this Country without destroying green corridors for wildlife, meadows and natural pastures and downlands etc
If young people canβt afford to have children, it is because of the increasingly wide poverty gap and a few megalithic multinationals accumulating the lion share of wealth into an increasingly fewer number of hands. The wealth is there it is just concentrated into too few hands.
If fertility is the issue, then as I said above, there are millions upon millions of children in need of adoption.
Nah, it just means the boomers have six houses eachSurely if the population declines then we eventually solve the housing shortage?
Are you suggesting that people have stopped breeding because they can't afford a mortgage?Many of you may have, but many under 40 will disagree. Salaries have completely stagnated, despite ever increasing house prices, inflation has hit across the board elsewhere, interest rates on mortgages are now huge which adds more pressure on huge mortgages, big debts from uni, higher taxβ¦
Thereβs a huge generational divide financially in this country at the moment and lower fertility is just one of the knock on effects of it.
And they can have it put down when it gets to the awkward teenage years!My friend and his wife were discussing having a child. They got a dog instead, a hell of a lot cheaper and much less hassle. Plus she doesn't have to spend 9 months pregnant.
......................and ultimately the demographics of who is breeding and who isn't will have knock on effects on the future of the planet.Are you suggesting that people have stopped breeding because they can't afford a mortgage?
During the era of big wage increases and full employment, when the likes of my parents could buy a 3 bed semi the likes of which were beyond my grasp at an equivalent age, the birth rate plummeted (see ringed part of graph below).
View attachment 191427
The reality is that it is still the poorest in society who are having the most kids, despite the massive gulf now between 3 times salary and entry level house prices.
The map below shows that the highest birth rates are in the shittiest areas surrounding London and the shittier bits of other regions, Bolton and suchlike, not central Manchester or central Leeds. There is a stark difference between Medway to Sittingbourne (lower house prices) and Faversham to Canterbury (higher house prices) that maps in the opposite direction to age to what you suggest. But it maps perfectly to wealth.
Births in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics
Annual summary statistics of live births, stillbirths and fertility rates.www.ons.gov.uk
View attachment 191423
In London, the richest bits right in the centre all have the lower birth rates, and the areas of highest birth rate are the poorer areas with a high Asian (NW, NE) and white (SE) demographic (race isn't the main driver).
View attachment 191424
Overall the correlation is not perfect but it still maps best to money - the better off don't breed regardless of the cost of housing.
This is the crucial point. Pensions are paid by current workers (not by pensioners' own NI contributions, as so many seem to think). There are three paths forward: a massive increase in immigration - and good luck to the party that suggests that; the abolition of the old age pension - so fund your own or work until you drop; or have more kids.This country currently has nowhere near enough young people being born. Your kids and grandkids have it quite a bit worse than you did, and when they get to retirement there wonβt be one.
Depending on how the next few weeks play out, our friends up the road might be open to euthanasia becoming an optionActually, there is a fourth option: compulsory euthanasia at, say, 65. I'm not sure that would be greeted with much enthusiasm though