Experts are warning of trouble ahead as the annual number of babies being born in England and Wales has fallen to the lowest level since 1977.
The consequences of the trend are already being felt and some have accused politicians of ignoring a “crisis”.
How many babies are being born?
According to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 585,396 babies were born last year, down from 594,677 in 2024. This means that in 2025, the number of babies born “fell to the lowest level in almost half a century”, which “continues the long-term trend of falling births going back over the past decade”, said Greg Ceely, ONS head of population health monitoring.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Latest Videos From
The average age of mothers and fathers has been steadily increasing since the 1960s, when the contraceptive pill was introduced. Parents were older than ever before: on average women were 31 when their child was born, and fathers were 34. In 1975, the average ages were 26 for mothers and 30 for fathers. In that year, nearly one-third of babies were born to parents who were not married, compared to almost half last year.
Why are numbers falling?
There is no single cause. The trend is mostly a mix of economic, social and cultural factors. The costs of housing and the instability of the housing market are making starting a family seem riskier. Also, the UK has some of the highest childcare costs in Europe, relative to wages, so even middle-income couples often find that one parent’s salary would mostly disappear into childcare.
People are having children later because they’re staying in education longer, or focusing on their career, or wanting to travel and enjoy years of independence before settling down. When people delay into their 30s, they often end up having fewer children than originally planned. Cultural changes mean that remaining child-free is more accepted than in the past when there was a stigma.
Is this a crisis?
The total fertility rate, which means the average number of children women are expected to have according to statistical trends, has fallen to 1.39 for England and Wales, the lowest ever recorded. For a country’s population to remain stable over time without relying on mass migration, the fertility rate needs to be around 2.1. The data will “fuel political anxieties” about the “plummeting birth rate”, said Eleanor Hayward, health editor for The Times.
A persistently low birth rate can create long-term demographic problems, because an ageing population means there are more retirees and fewer workers supporting pensions, healthcare, social care, and taxes needed for public services. A shrinking population means that more jobs will go unfilled and economic dynamism will reduce.
Other consequences are “already being felt”, said The Guardian. Some schools are being forced to close, businesses such as soft-play centres and childminders are struggling, and midwifery courses are facing challenges because students must attend a minimum number of births.
Meanwhile, people are also living longer: life expectancy has been rising since the late 18th century, and fertility has been declining since the late 19th century, aside from a short rebound in the middle of the 20th century.
But “Westminster dwellers” don’t always “take an interest in this crisis”, which “often seems to be the problem that cannot be named” for politicians who don’t want to appear “anti-feminist” or “overly interfering in people’s personal lives”, said Politics Home.
Is alarm around the issue justified? “I don’t think so,” the cognitive and evolutionary anthropologist, Paula Sheppard, told New Scientist. There are nearly nine billion people on Earth, so “we’re not going to go extinct any time soon”.
