Britain could see more deaths than births by 2030 as the baby bust shows no sign of slowing
The UK’s fertility rate has collapsed since 2012, with the total fertility rate falling from 1.9 children per woman to a joint-record low of 1.6 in 2023, and even lower provisional figures of 1.4 in England and Wales and 1.3 in Scotland for 2024. Births hit 660,000 last year, the second-lowest total on record.
Think tank the Resolution Foundation now warns that deaths will outnumber births from around 2030 onward, a milestone that would mark a profound demographic shift for one of Europe’s largest economies.
A new report by the group argues that while the raw decline in births may not be an immediate crisis, its economic, fiscal, and social ripple effects deserve serious attention from policymakers.
A widening fertility gap
The drop isn’t happening because Brits have suddenly decided they want smaller families. Ideal family size has stayed steady at or above the replacement level of roughly 2.1 children.
Yet the gap between what women aged 40-54 say they ideally want and what they actually have has widened sharply in the UK, from 0.3 in 2011 to 0.7 in recent years. The UK has seen one of the largest increases in this fertility gap among comparable countries.
This mismatch shows up in lived experience as being childless at age 30 has become the new normal. For women born in the late 1980s, 48% were still childless at 30. For those born in the early 1990s, that figure has jumped to 58%.
The average number of children born to women by age 30 has also plunged, from about 1.0 to 0.7 in just seven years between the 1988 and 1995 birth cohorts.
Delay is now hitting non-graduates hardest
For decades, the trend toward later parenthood was driven by graduate women. Higher education and career-building raised the opportunity cost of early childbearing, pushing the median age at first birth for graduates from 28 (early-1950s cohort) to 32 (1970s cohort).
Non-graduates, by contrast, had their first child at a relatively stable 25-26. That pattern has now flipped in the 2010s.
Graduate women remain more likely to be childless in their 20s and early 30s, but the sharpest recent rise in childlessness has come from non-graduate women in their mid-to-late 20s. The share who haven’t had a child climbed from 33% in 2011 to 54% in 2023 – the most dramatic shift of any education-age group.
A snapshot shows that graduate women are still more likely to be childless (56%) than non-graduates (30%). But housing status stands out even more as roughly 70% of those living rent-free have no children.
The report notes that young non-graduates have faced a double squeeze. A shift toward expensive private renting followed by a rise in living with parents.
The share in their mid-to-late 20s experiencing one or the other has roughly doubled over 25 years. Partnership rates have also flipped — non-graduates aged 25-29 are now slightly less likely to be coupled up than graduates.
