How big are the UK's demographic challenges?

Published on 8 November 2024

With birth rates at record lows, we ask what the implications are for the UK and how it might impact the public finances.

At the end of October, the ONS announced that the fertility rate in England and Wales had fallen to 1.44 births per woman in 2023 - the lowest figure since records began in 1938.

What will this mean for the population make-up of the country? What other big demographic shifts are occurring? Why is this trend occurring across the developed world? And what will its implications be for the public finances?

To discuss those questions, Paul is joined by Melinda Mills, Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and Nuffield Professor of Demography at Oxford. And by Carl Emmerson, Deputy Director at IFS and one of the leading experts on the UK's public finances.