Births in the United Kingdom are halving every 55 years. While headlines still focus on overpopulation – driven by urban growth, longer life expectancy, and immigration – the real demographic trajectory is heading sharply in the opposite direction. If current trends continue, by 2080 Britain will need only half as many neonatal units, kindergartens, and primary schools as it does today. That may sound distant, but the effects are already here. Schools are closing across the country, particularly in London, and earlier this year the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead announced that it is set to close its maternity and neonatal units in the coming years, citing falling birthrates.
The UK is not alone. The EU faces a nearly identical outlook; the United States is not far behind. In Spain and Japan, births are halving every 38 years. South Korea is on an even steeper trajectory, with births halving every 19 years. Current fertility patterns show only 45 per cent of South Koreans are likely to have children (and that’s often later in life), meaning that when today’s newborns reach parenthood, just a quarter of existing schools are likely to remain open.
Falling birthrates are frequently chalked up to very personal lifestyle choices – that more people are choosing to have smaller families or opting out of parenthood altogether. But that’s far from reality for many. In the UK, the average number of children per mother was about 2.3 in 1970 and remains almost the same today. In Japan, it has held steady at 2.2 for over five decades. Mothers are having more children in the US than they were in the 1980s. What has changed is not the size of families – it’s how many people never start them.
The real crisis is unplanned childlessness, not shrinking families. My research, based on data from 350 million women across 39 economies, shows a consistent root cause: delayed parenthood. In the UK today, a woman turning 28 has only a 50 per cent chance of ever becoming a mother, based on current fertility patterns. Many young people are shocked by this, assuming their chances are much higher. While, in theory, earlier parenthood could return, there are virtually no examples of a country managing to reverse this pattern once widespread delay sets in. And yet, this entire topic remains mostly absent from most political debate.
So why have so many leaders hesitated to acknowledge this crisis? In part, because doing so would require reassessing long held positions. Many left-leaning parties, in particular, have long advocated for gender equality in the workplace without adequately considering how the timing of parenthood fits in. Others remain committed to outdated fears of overpopulation.
But for those less willing to engage in a conversation there’s a problem: reality. The United Nations now expects the global population to peak and begin falling later this century. Many countries are already on the downward slope – a shift with enormous implications for pensions, healthcare, infrastructure, and military capacity. As more citizens age out of the workforce, fewer will be around to fund or staff the systems on which we all depend. Decline is no longer abstract – it’s measurable, visible, and fast-moving.
Yet something may finally be changing. Earlier this month, I was invited to the European People’s Party Congress in Valencia, a gathering of over 1,500 centrist and centre-right politicians representing the largest grouping in the EU, including at least a dozen prime ministers and as many former heads of state, and Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President (and mother of seven). It’s not the kind of place you’d expect a demographer to be speaking, but this year was different. Europe’s leaders are starting to realise the demographic reckoning can no longer be ignored.
The real crisis is unplanned childlessness, not shrinking families
I sat on a panel with EU Commissioner Dubravka Šuica, whose portfolio includes demography and discussed the future of rural populations and the challenges to start a family for many Europeans. I witnessed something extraordinary: the adoption of a resolution titled Responding to the Demographic Winter – a document I had advocated for, and one that, remarkably, was passed unanimously by the Congress.
Unlike vague statements of concern, this resolution gets specific. It names delayed parenthood and unplanned childlessness as central challenges. It recognises that most people still want children and calls for policies that make forming families genuinely possible. Not just through handouts, but through systemic change: better access to housing, flexible working conditions, dignified parental leave and a cultural shift toward openness to family life. This is no far-right agenda; it’s as centrist as policy gets. The document goes further, urging the integration of family-friendly policy into economic planning, labour reform, healthcare strategy, and even digital infrastructure. It connects the dots between falling birthrates, rising loneliness, weakened communities and the growing strain on pensions and public services.
The resolution doesn’t yet have the force of law. But it is a political watershed. For the first time, a major bloc of centrist European leaders has stepped forward and said what many others have tiptoed around for years: this is real, this is urgent, and the crisis won’t fix itself.
The United States, meanwhile, is also waking up to the crisis. Donald Trump has mooted a $5,000 (£3,750) payment for new mothers. While baby bonuses have been tried many times across low-birthrate nations, and have universally failed to deliver long-term change, the encouraging news is that this crisis is finally getting the headlines it deserves. Awareness alone won’t solve it. But without awareness, no solution stands a chance.
Some fear that framing this issue as a crisis plays into conservative hands. But the longer progressives delay engaging, the more the right will control the narrative. If the left continues to ignore this topic, it risks being outflanked by parties and candidates who won’t.
The UK has a long way to go. Ironically, in their first weeks in government, Labour dismissed proposals to extend child support beyond the second child. The silence across Britain’s political class – left, centre and right – is deafening compared to the growing urgency in the EU and the accelerating momentum in the US. As other nations begin to act, the UK risks being left behind – demographically and politically.
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