Britain is still a few years away from a demographic crunch but a shortage of babies will harm it in the end
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskEngland and Wales are indeed ageing. Just over half of the overall population increase of 3.5m between 2011 and 2021 was driven by growth in the number of people aged 65 or over. But demography is less of a drag on Britain’s prospects than the doomsayers suppose, at least for now. The country is not enduring a population winter but enjoying a balmy population autumn.
One reason is mass immigration, says Sarah Harper of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing: 29% of births in England and Wales in 2020 were to women born outside the United Kingdom. Another reason is the post-war baby boom, which was-shaped. Births in England and Wales spiked in 1947, then fell, then surged again. The second-highest year for births since the war was 1964, when 876,000 babies were born. That huge cohort, now aged 58, has a few more years to go before it gets its bus pass.
The other reason not to panic yet is that the most economically important parts of Britain are not ageing much, and in some cases not at all. Thanks to immigrants, students and relatively high birth rates, as well as out-migration of older people, cities such as Birmingham and Manchester have almost exactly the same proportion of over-64s as they did a decade ago. Some youthful parts of London—such as Barking and Dagenham, and Tower Hamlets—have become even younger.
Life in the two places is very different. Claire Brooks, who runs the Walnut Tree Shades, a pub and music venue in Norwich, says that her clientele is becoming younger, partly because older people continue to avoid crowded places. In North Norfolk, Tim Adams, the leader of the district council, says that seaside hotels are being converted into care homes.
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