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Across london,Your browser does not support the element. primary schools are under threat. In Tulse Hill, in the south of the capital, parents and local politicians are trying to save Fenstanton Primary School, pleading that it is “the beating heart” of a poor neighbourhood. Lambeth Council is likely to shut it anyway, citing a sharp decline in the number of young children in the area. The school could hold 630 pupils. It had just 271 in January.Babies are in generally. On October 28th the Office for National Statistics announced that the in England and Wales was just 1.44 births per woman in 2023—the lowest figure since records began in 1938. The rate is well below the point that Japan reached in 1989, when it experienced what was known as the “1.57 shock”. In Lambeth the fertility rate is a mere 1.09, about the same as in .Ask Britons why they are or are not having babies, and their answers are not that enlightening. A study in early October by Alina Pelikh and Alice Goisis of University College London found that almost half of 32-year-olds who want children but are not currently trying to conceive say simply that they are not ready. A rise in university-going and a pervasive anxiety about the state of the world seem to be contributing to that unreadiness.The cost of housing weighs on people, too. John Ermisch, a demographer, has compared housing costs and childbirth in the regions of England and Wales. In an unpublished paper he estimates that three-fifths of the decline in the fertility rate between 2013-16 and 2017-22 could be attributed to real increases in house prices. Women with degrees seem to be particularly susceptible to this effect. That may be because they rarely live in social housing or receive housing benefits, which protect some poorer women from rising prices.Are England and Wales destined to follow East Asian countries into a babyless future? At least one of the responses from the public to Lambeth Council’s proposal to shut Fenstanton Primary School said that the number of children could rise again. Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has argued much the same. The council pooh-poohs this possibility. But the quibblers are right: the baby slump could end in the next few years, for three reasons.The first has to do with the rising age of parenthood. The mean average age of first-time motherhood in England and Wales is rising by about one year every decade; in 2022 it was 29. That change is suppressing the fertility rate, which is not a forecast about the number of babies that women will end up having but a measure of current behaviour. If women settle into a pattern of older childbearing, the fertility rate will recover a bit.The Vienna Institute of Demography estimates fertility rates that take into account changes in the timing of births. This adjusted rate is about 0.2 points higher than the actual fertility rate in England and Wales; the gaps in countries with similar demography like Denmark and the Netherlands are about the same.The second reason for optimism, at least if you manufacture cots or run a school, is history. Demography often moves in waves, with the number of babies advancing and receding. These set off other waves. England had a baby slump in the 1970s and another one in the late 1990s, which was caused partly by the 1970s slump: there just weren’t many young women around to have children.Then, between 2002 and 2012, maternity wards became busier (see chart). Lambeth was full of babies—so full that the council sent leaflets to households in 2011 warning that it might run out of primary-school places. The babies born during that boom are now in their teens and early 20s. Over the next few years there will, at the very least, be a growing number of 20-somethings agonising about whether or not to have children.Finally, Britain differs from the baby deserts of East Asia in having lots of immigrants. Net migration has been above 400,000 a year since 2021. That has irked politicians and the public but it could be a boon if you are trying to keep a school open, since many immigrants are young women. In 2022 three in ten babies born in England and Wales had foreign-born mothers, and the share is rising. Immigrants have bailed out Britain in many ways. They could yet ameliorate its baby slump, too.
