Britain’s shrinking families: An economic ‘timebomb’
https://news.sky.com/story/britains-shrinking-families-an-economic-timebomb-13316294
Posted by Redditmodunemployed
Britain’s shrinking families: An economic ‘timebomb’
https://news.sky.com/story/britains-shrinking-families-an-economic-timebomb-13316294
Posted by Redditmodunemployed
32 Comments
>”In Tokyo, things are as crowded and busy as ever, but the Japanese countryside is emptying out,” he said.
>”It means that property values there are collapsing – nobody wants to buy a house in a village that’s disappearing.”
Not property prices?! đ±
Don’t worry, we can import millions from the third world. I’m sure they’re the same.
I find it so funny that we get an article like this at least once very few months from a conservative opinion grifter and yet they never seem to admit fault.
If we canât afford kids, weâre not going to have kids, itâs really that simple.
What a shock that is.
Between the current geopolitical landscape and the prospect of horrendous costs incurred in raising children itâs not exactly a stretch to imagine why people are deciding to have fewer or no children.
Personally I couldnât justify it, my generation will already be saddled with the decisions of the country in the past twenty years for as long as I will live, I have genuine and profound sympathy for those who come after and have to rise from the primordial sludge that is the current generation of feral children being raised in the country.
The UK population has gone up by 20% over the last 40 years. So instead of bleating about the low birth rate, it would be more relevant to look at the bigger picture and stop the growth rate which we clearly can’t cope with.
Do I even need to state the obvious? A weak economy feeds a weaker economy, it’s that simple. Over a decade of austerity and barely anything at all to show for it, barely hanging on by a thread and arguably in a worse spot than we were 14 years ago. If a family can’t afford kids, they’re not going to have kids, but it’s that idiocracy prediction that sensible families suited for mature parenthood aren’t having even a single child, whereas lower income families from less academic backgrounds breed like rabbits and add to an increasing population of less educated and less mature individuals, as well as turning into a competitive dog-eat-dog world/economy where people are having to fight for housing, jobs, welfare, healthcare, and eventually basic resources like food and water. We should be better than this, but somehow we’re not. And I know it’s not just us; the whole world is suffering. But, we’ll just keep importing migrants from abroad to fix the issue. I don’t know what information they’re being told about this country, but the roads are not paved with gold, housing isn’t abundant, jobs aren’t readily available for all who are willing to work them without basic education, and food is NOT cheap.
Funny to think that a single-earner could once raise a family of 5 on one pay cheque.
Maybe someone needs to look into why this is no longer the case?
Increasing evidence shows that the economy is less of an impact than culture and women’s education. Scandinavia, Japan, South Korea have all tried to improve it by lobbing money at the problem but the truth appears to be that most people would prefer not to have children, if given the choice.
Access to contraception and education has dramatically improved women’s lives, to the point where having a child is not seen as a reasonable choice. Fair enough.
The main reason this is a concern is because certain generations, who benefited from lands of milk and honey (great pension, cheap housing, best healthcare) have lived far longer than any previous generations.
It’s made them a massive voting bloc and how dare you think of taking away their winter fuel payments or triple lock.
To my eyes, the likeliest outcomes are a combination of: increased migration, the few generations beneath them (anyone born between about 1980-2020) suffering with considerably poorer elderly care and a decline in home ownership, until it sort of evens out.
Provided the planet hasn’t completely burned up, circa 2100, we’ll possibly have consistent beanpole families below replacement rate (across the world) but much less of a chasm between young and old.
I have a one year old.
My nursery costs are 1600 per month.
We can’t afford a second.
It was wrong to build an economy that is dependent on a growing population that is unsustainable and will reduce standards of living as the country fights over limited space. The problem isnât shrinking families, itâs a complete lack of foresight 20-40 years ago.
I think the millennials will be the last generation where the majority of them will able to afford a house if the prices keep going up.
Itâs not as if itâs significantly cheaper to rent anymore either.
At the end of the day. Why will people have kids when they canât afford a home to bring them up in?
Also. Day to day items are so much more now and wages havenât correlated. It used to be ÂŁ300k to raise a child to 17 years of age. I think. Iâd love to know what the new figure is.
Is population growth the only way to grow the economyâŠ
Having kids has always been expensive. Except for perhaps a blip between the 60s and 80s where it was a bit more manageable. How the hell do you think they managed during Victorian times, or during the wars, or in the Middle Ages?
The reason is âexpectationâ. Everyone expects to carry on with their lives as they are, but with children. And if children mean a drop in quality of life, then people arenât prepared to do it.
Yes, the housing crisis is a huge factor, security being a primary expectation. If you have kids, you want the security of your own home.
But I think the internet has given people an idea about what their life should be. And if kids mean giving up the nice things, and the gym membership, then itâs not worth it.
When I had kids, I cancelled Netflix, prime, and Spotify. I spent 6 months paying off my credit cards and not doing anything. And when my firstborn came along, things were tight for a couple of years. But it got easier⊠until our second came along.
Weâre finally at a reasonable place economically, so looking to move to a bigger house, but itâs not easy.
It should be personal choice whether people have kids, but I donât buy that it just down to the economy or geopolitics. I do think itâs down to expectation.
Well if you made it easier to be a parent in terms of you know childcare costs and costs of living there would be more chances to have kids.
Nah its the peoples fault their just being selfish /s
My partner and I literally cannot afford another child, our only one was already stressful as fuck financially as statutory mayernity pay accounts for around a third of her typical monthly wage so weve pretty much had to support three people on my wage which is a bit less than hers.
We’re lucky as well to have a strong support network from both of our families who will be able to help out with childcare when she returns to work but money is still a worry.
If the government want families to have kids, you need to actually put in the support systems to allow them.
I pretty much remember being warned at school about the dangers of over population, how people were evil and we needed to stop having children or we’ll all starve.
And yet the world population seems to have gone into overdrive. It seems like only western nations were given that message. Odd that.
We have Imported hundreds of thousands of young men from god knows where, bringing with them their strong educational background and similar values and culture.
So everything is going to be fine đ
Conservatives for all of the rest of history: âstop having kids you canât affordâ
Conservatives post Covid: âHave babies, peasants! We need stock for the future working poorâ
Maybe control rent so people can afford more than a room in a HMO? Make childcare affordable???
THEN MAKE IT EASIER TO HAVE BIG FAMILIES, GOVERNMENT. GIVE US MORE THAN 6 WEEKS AT 92% PAY AND THEN SMP. MAKE CHILDCARE AFFORDABLE. MAKE HOUSE/RENT PRICES LOWER SO WE CAN AFFORD CHILD CARE OR SINGLE INCOME HOUSEHOLDS.
That is all
Millennials had “don’t have children if you can’t afford it” drummed into us for our entire childhoods.
It was a very common refrain in opinion pieces and comments sections. People would collectively gather around the TV, tutting and parroting it while watching any one of endless shows demonising people on benefits that dare to have children (and a pet dog, and drink a beer, or smoke a cigarette, and have a “flat screen TV”)
And now they’re doing a shocked Pikachu face because we listened?
Itâs an absolutely massive problem which no political party wants to talk about because they donât have a solution. When the state pension was introduced the life expectancy of a man was 68. So basically they received a state pension for just 3 years. Currently life expectancy for men is 79 and growing. A woman born today will have a life expectancy of 90, with a 1 in 4 chance of reaching 100. There is simply not enough young people of working age to sustain things as they currently are. I apologise for the doom and gloom.
Kinda hard to have kids when people have to choose wether to eat or heat their homes.
Average right-wing opinion piece:
Ooh no, we need more people to avoid an economic catastrophe.
No, not the brown ones.
Alternatively, an economic system that requires perpetual growth is an economic timebomb.
People repeating the same lies. Itâs got nothing to do with money. If it did, the wealthy would have more kids, which they donât.Â
Women have more power over getting pregnant and shock, horror, they donât want to go through pregnancy 3 or 4 times. Who can blame them?
My grandparents and great grandparents lived in absolute poverty relative to current generations, bringing up 5-6 kids in 2 bedroom houses. People are trying to argue that it was easier to bring up kids then than now?
Cost of living aside, after working 40 hours a week in this system, people are rightly asking why should they sacrifice whatever little free time they have left to raise another cog for the machine? No thanks. The greatest gift Iâll give to my future kids is not having them, and they wonât be doomed to nigh on 60 years of wage slavery đ.
I’m getting 3 or 4 kids and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. I’ll be poor as fuck but at least I will be able to say I didn’t stop my bloodline because I couldn’t afford it.
I live in Scotland which has the lowest fertility rate of the UK. It also has the worst setup for childcare assistance (basically nothing until child is 3) yet there is a lot of shocked pikachu faces as to why the rate is so low. In fact childcare costs is the main factor on almost 40% of all abortions in Scotland.
For further context we have 1 child and childcare is ÂŁ1100 a month. Our mortgage on a 3 bed detached is ÂŁ1000. Yes – one child is MORE than our mortgage. This is basically stopping us single handedly from having another.
What a lot of boomers also forget when saying âwe just needed a single incomeâ is that the cost of living since has risen far faster than wages to the point a dual income is needed to afford what needed a single income 50 years ago.
Stop mass migration, build homes, give women who have children income tax breaks for life. Problem solved in a decade.
We just managed to get a house. Just. I canât imagine how the next generation would do it
This is truly an economic disaster waiting to happen.
This is not the fault of parents for not being able to afford babies.
Both of these statements are true.